Environmental Management System

An Environmental Management System (EMS) is a systematic method for assessing mission activities, determining the environmental impacts of those activities, prioritizing improvements, and measuring results.

Department of Energy (DOE) Order 450.1 defines an EMS as “a continuous cycle of planning, implementing, evaluating, and improving processes and actions undertaken to achieve environmental missions and goals.”

Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is committed to protecting the environment while conducting its important national security and energy-related missions. In support of this commitment, LANL has implemented an EMS pursuant to DOE Order 450.1, Environmental Protection Program. DOE Order 450.1 mandates that the EMS be integrated with the existing Integrated Safety Management System already established pursuant to DOE Policy 450.4.

The most widely accepted international standard for an EMS is the International Organization for Standardization (ISO 14001:2004 standard). The Laboratory received third-party registration to the ISO 14001:2004 standard in April 2006.

The EMS is extremely important to pollution prevention and continuous risk reduction at Los Alamos because both DOE Order 450.1 and the ISO 14001:2004 standard stress pollution prevention as a primary mechanism to achieve continual improvement.