This paper analyses all of the activities carried out by CETREL to establish its Environmental Management System - EMS. This system encompasses all of CETREL's environmental protection efforts: treatment of industrial effluents and residues; environmental monitoring (soil, air, groundwater, rivers and the sea); wildlife preservation programme, environmental education programme, among other activities.
CETREL's EMS is a mid-sized system consisting of nearly 425 Instruments (244 Procedures and 181 Work Instructions). The size of the system was selected based on British Standard BS-7750, which provides the principal tools that will allow the organisation to continually maximise beneficial environmental effects while minimising adverse environmental effects.
Since the EMS in question is a voluntary one, the result of initiatives taken by CETREL itself, the system's design and architecture were chosen so that the Company's environmental standards would be more stringent than those in the environmental legislation, that is, stricter than the government-mandated environmental requirements.
