E4 Application Questions

Section 5: E4 Application
Please address each of the following topics, and feel free to attach supporting documentation.

Identification of Environmental Impacts:
Describe your facility’s process for identifying and evaluating its environmental impacts. At a minimum, please include a list of your most significant environmental impacts.

Setting Objectives & Targets:
Please include a list of your goals (objectives) for reducing environmental impacts. Ideally, objectives would include numerical goals with projects designed to achieve these goals. The objectives should include targets, or a schedule for completing tasks and/or achieving the stated objectives.

Pollution Prevention:
In a typical EMS structure, objectives and targets may only address the impacts identified as the most “significant”. For the Pollution Prevention section, please feel free to list any other environmental projects that you have ongoing or planned. If possible, please include quantified reductions realized or expected and any cost savings.

Environmental Legal Requirements:
Describe your facility’s process for identifying its environmental legal requirements and its mechanism for tracking changes in environmental compliance requirements.

Roles, Responsibilities and Authorities:
Describe how your facility defines, documents and maintains the roles, responsibilities and authorities related to its environmental management system.

Reporting and Recordkeeping:
Describe your facility’s procedures for reporting and maintaining records that document the status of the environmental management system operations and activities.

Training:
Describe your facility’s procedures for ensuring that all employees have the necessary training related to the environmental management system.

Emergency Response Procedures:
Describe your facility’s procedures for responding to, reporting, mitigating and reviewing environmental incidents.

Monitoring, Investigative and Corrective Actions:
Describe your facility’s system for monitoring, investigating and correcting non-compliance with its environmental management system.

Voluntary Self Assessments:
Describe your facility’s self-assessment or auditing system, which may be external or internal.

Communication Procedures:
Describe your facility’s procedures to communicate with and inform external and internal audiences regarding your environmental management system.

Section 5: E4 Application – E4 Environmental Results & Commitments
Your facility will be required to report annually on the results of your EMS and Pollution Prevention efforts (annual reports due April 1st of each year). Establishing baseline data and tracking results is necessary in order to evaluate the effectiveness of your EMS. A comprehensive EMS may address a wide array of environmental impacts: solid waste, water use, wastewater, energy usage, air impacts, etc.

The ability to measure and report progress is also very important to the administration and success of the Virginia Environmental Excellence Program. We hope that your facility will establish baselines and track progress on all of the environmental measures that you are addressing through your EMS. At a minimum, E4 facilities are required to commit to track EMS results in at least 3 of the following categories:

• Air Emissions
• Energy Use
• Water Discharges
• Water Use
• Waste
• Material Use
• Land Use
• Product Performance
• Other

Facilities are encouraged to focus on one or more of the "indicators" within a category (listed below) when tracking progress and reporting annually to DEQ (although an option of "other" for indicator is available in each category). In the annual report, you will be expected to provide a quantifiable baseline and results for the past year's efforts in these categories.

Section 5: E4 Application - Commitment to Continuous and Sustainable Environmental Progress & Community Involvement:
E4 facilities are required to document that they have committed to continuous and sustainable environmental progress and community involvement. Because each facility’s situation in terms of purpose, location and impacts may prove unique from other facilities, DEQ will be developing and posting on this site examples of sustainable environmental progress and community involvement measures for prospective E4 facilities to consider when preparing an application. If you have questions on this criterion, please contact Sharon Baxter at skbaxter@deq.virginia.gov