We're an independent statutory authority under the Environment Protection Act 2017. Our role is to prevent and reduce harm from pollution and waste.
As part of this role, we help Victorian businesses understand what the Environment Protection Act and related legislation means to them and what they need to do to comply.
We acknowledge efforts that result in good risk management and higher performance. We work with other authorities to:
- encourage higher performance
- raise industry practices
- inform future standards.
Provide guidance to build knowledge, capability and capacity
Every business has an obligation under the law to seek information that helps them to:
- understand and comply with their obligations
- stay up to date with changing industry practices.
Under the general environmental duty, every business has a responsibility to:
- understand, assess and manage the risks their business activities may have
- eliminate or reduce those risks as far as reasonably practicable.
We work with businesses to help them build their knowledge, capability and capacity to prevent environmental harm.
We develop guidance to support businesses to:
- understand their obligations under environment protection laws
- improve their capability to identify and manage the risks their business activities have of harm to human health and the environment
- know what steps they can take to eliminate or reduce those risks
- improve their approach to environmental management.
Our guidance provides approaches to identifying risk and practical measures that businesses can take to comply with their obligations. It includes:
- guidance for industry for managing common industry-specific hazards and risks
- detailed guidance to support permission holders to comply with standards and specific permission conditions
- hazard-based guidance covering common hazards that may cause pollution and harm – for example, dust, erosion and sediment, liquid and solid storage and handling, noise, or odour
- general guidance for business – for example, guidance on managing environmental risk and working with environmental consultants.
We also support business by:
- providing information about major human health and environmental issues
- educating them after any severe or repeated compliance breaches in their industry.
EPA authorised officers provide practical and constructive guidance to support businesses to comply. They also provide support on how to remedy any non-compliance.
Our industry partnerships and programs offer opportunities for Victorian businesses to partner or collaborate with us. These include:
- help developing learning resources and guidance materials
- support to deliver training programs.
Improve practices and performance
We work with leaders and partners to encourage higher performance, improve industry practices and inform future standards.
We encourage higher environmental performance:
Positive examples
We promote, encourage and support those who do the right thing and go beyond minimum standards.
Innovation
Businesses can test solutions to environmental issues or find ways to exceed their environmental obligations with a better environment plan.
Rewards and incentives
We identify opportunities to reduce the regulatory burden on high performers.
Strategic stakeholder engagement
We engage with people in priority industry or business sectors or in specific locations to design solutions and approaches, like customer experience improvements.
Government collaboration
We work with government to promote the prevention of harm and raise the profile of emerging issues of environmental concern.
Updated