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Introduction
Environmental audit is not a new activity. The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) published its Guide to Effective Environmental Auditing[1], jointly written by staff of Arthur D. Little, a consultancy firm, and the US manufacturing company, Allied-Signal. They refer to "[the authors'] collective experience of more than 60 years in conducting environmental audits around the world". Elkington[2, p. 16] claims that ICI began environmental auditing in the 1960s, although it then ceased for an unspecified length of time, resuming in 1989. It is only in very recent years, however, that interest in environmental audit -- both among practitioners and potential clients -- has become widespread.
It is possible to identify two sets of forces encouraging companies to adopt environmental audit. What might be termed direct pressures are those explicitly encouraging the introduction of environmental audit; indirect pressures are the range of threats and opportunities presented by environmental awareness among customers, competitors and legislators.
The major direct pressure for the mandatory introduction of environmental audit comes from the EC. The EC's original proposal was for specified sectors of industry to be subject to a mandatory audit. In the face of industry opposition, the EC has dropped this scheme and replaced it with a voluntary scheme involving what it calls an ecoaudit[3]. Companies registering under the scheme will be required to have an environmental policy and an environmental management system, and to have quantifiable targets for continuous improvement of performance. They must carry out an audit at regular intervals -- a minimum of every three years. The products of the audit will be an audit report, submitted to management, and a published environmental statement, reflecting the audit results. The report and the statement will both be subject to independent external validation. Companies participating in the scheme will be entitled to publicize their status. BS 7750, the draft British Standard on environmental management, requires that the operation of the environmental management system "should be internally audited and evaluated on a regular, pre-determined basis". This audit should be performed by staff who are within the organization but independent of the areas being audited and reporting directly to management -- the classic formulation of the duties of an internal auditor. The Standard was introduced in March 1994; it remains...