Targets and reporting

The regulatory, monitoring and educational work SEPA staff carry out delivers an environmental benefit far in excess of our own negative impacts arising from our day-to-day operations. However, in order to speak from a position of credibility on improving environmental performance nationally, SEPA believes that we should lead from the front. That is why we place great emphasis on managing our own direct environmental impacts.

SEPA aims to be an exemplar in Scotland for managing our own environmental impacts and driving down our CO2 emissions from all business related activities.

We will maintain certification to the international Environmental Management Systems standard ISO14001 for all site and all activities. The scope of our certification covers both our direct environmental impacts and the delivery of our core services. We can include the latter because SEPA’s main aim is to protect and improve Scotland’s environment, and this reflects the basis of the ISO14001 standard ‘to deliver continual environmental improvement’. For SEPA, this also means continual improvement of Scotland’s environment.

SEPA has developed a set of strategic Greening SEPA targets, and our participation in the Local Authority Carbon management Programme with the Carbon Trust has identified a new longer-term CO2 reduction objective:

• SEPA will reduce CO2 emissions arising from business activities by 25% below the 2006–2007 baseline by 31 March 2012.

The following target on transport will support this objective:

• SEPA will reduce CO2 from all transport modes by 10% of our 2006–2007 baseline by 31 March 2011.

Further sub-targets will be applied to drive improvements on a shorter-term basis and to target specific areas, for example, our consumption of electricity and gas in buildings.

SEPA will also address its other environmental impacts through the following set of targets:

• reduce all waste by actively using the hierarchy of prevention, reduction, re-use and recycling before disposal;
• reduce current water consumption per full time equivalent (FTE) member of staff, below recognised benchmarks by 31 March 2011;
• examine ways to reduce the impact of the goods and services SEPA procures, with specific targets for major goods and a commitment to work with the Scottish Government to influence Scottish public sector procurement;
• have a biodiversity action plan in place at all SEPA offices with grounds by 31 March 2011.

Specific sub-targets will also be applied in support of these higher level targets, for example, a target to control paper consumption.

Benchmarking with other public and private sector organisations is a very necessary and important component of setting appropriate targets and measuring performance. At the same time, SEPA should be at the forefront of public sector environmental performance. These targets have been reviewed against those current with other public and private sector organisations.

SEPA will monitor and report on performance in this area on a quarterly basis and each year will publish a Greening SEPA report.