Environmental management
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Medicare Australia is committed to best practice environmental performance through an Environmental Management System (EMS) that aligns to the international standard ISO 14001. A structured management approach has been adopted to report the ongoing performance of managing Medicare Australia’s environmental risks and environmental initiatives. After undertaking an environmental review of Medicare Australia’s environmental impacts, an Environmental policy was developed to systematically address these issues – namely in business decision and procurement processes, energy, water, paper and waste management.
A key requirement to the EMS framework is raising environmental awareness among staff as well as individuals and companies that directly or indirectly contract to the organisation. In addressing this issue, Medicare Australia has established the following processes:
- fully interactive e-learning modules on energy, paper, water and waste recycling which is deployed on the corporate intranet site to raise staff awareness;
- an intranet site dedicated to environmental information, initiatives, targets and general performance;
- a nation-wide network of environmental coordinators to attain consistency and standardisation of environmental practices;
- induction training on environmental awareness for new employees;
- whole of life cycle assessment and environmental provisions into the procurement process, such as the use of certified environmental labelling meeting ISO 14000 series standards;
- enhanced business planning processes to mitigate risk of adverse environmental impacts; and
- environmental impact statements into costing templates for new business proposals.
After a number of environmental audits and data gathering exercises to determine baseline measurements, Medicare Australia has developed a series of initiatives surrounding energy, water, paper and waste management. These initiatives are performance managed (or governed) under Medicare Australia’s corporate scorecard through environmental key performance indicators and targets.
Environmental policy
Medicare Australia adopts an environmental management approach to improve environmental performance as well as address adverse environmental impacts from its business operations. To achieve these outcomes over a large distributed property network, Medicare Australia has introduced a comprehensive environmental policy, which is strongly supported by the executive management. The policy is used to instigate structural change by setting standards for internal processes and external interactions. The environmental policy forms the basis of an Environmental Management System (EMS) compliant to international standards – ISO EMS 14001.
Environmental sustainability
The environmental sustainability report details Medicare Australia’s environmental management program and environmental performance using global reporting initiative standards.
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Last updated: 8 September, 2008