EPA Victoria Winemarkers' Environmental Management Kit

Procedure: Check Environmental Performance

Introduction
Without some form of monitoring and measurement, you cannot know whether environmental controls are effective, or whether improvements you have implemented have resulted in better environmental and cost performance.

In this stage, you will review your controls and improvement actions to consider what can be measured to monitor their effectiveness, then you will implement the required monitoring and reporting.

Procedure

Step 1: Identify New Monitoring Needs
Review the following and identify new monitoring or measurement needs:

actions taken to improve control of the winery's environmental effects
cleaner production initiatives (from the Cleaner Production Program)
any long-term improvement projects initiated by management.

In the case of controls of environmental effects, some form of monitoring should always be put in place if failure of that control may result in noncompliance with a legal obligation or a significant environmental harm.

Step 2: Decide on Monitoring Activities
Monitoring may require some form of physical measurement, it may simply require a regular inspection (by winery staff or a contractor) or it may require regular collection of data (for example for resource use). Where possible, monitoring should take the form of quantitative measurements.

For each of the identified monitoring and training needs identified in the previous step, decide:

what monitoring actions are to be undertaken
the frequency of monitoring
who will be responsible for doing it
what reporting and evaluation of results is required.

Get a more detailed checklist of issues to consider when planning monitoring.

Record this information in the Register of Monitoring Activities.

Develop work instructions or checklists if required. If measurement equipment requires periodic calibration needs, make plans for this.

Step 3: Implement Monitoring Activities
Establish a schedule and implement the monitoring activities according to the schedule. Provide appropriate training. Ensure the monitoring results are reported to management and then recorded in a permanent record or file.

Next
Next procedure (Review).