When you are serving as a law clerk, you will be asked to prepare different policies by your attorney/lawyer. One of the most complicated policies to prepare is an environmental policy.
A Brief Introduction about Environmental Policy
An environmental policy is a document that will be prepared by a law clerk with the guidance of the lawyer or attorney for whom he or she works. It is a document that contains the agreed stances of an organization towards the environment in which it operates.
It is a way by which an organization accepts the impact of its harmful activities on the environment and agrees to resolve the issues in future endeavors. Through an environmental policy, an organization agrees to protect the environment and follow the rules and regulations.
Preparing an environmental policy is not an easy task. For an environmental policy to be efficient, it is important to include accurate information.
Important Points to Include in Your Environmental Policy
- A brief introduction and aim of the environment policy
- Specify those who are responsible for the implementation of the environmental policy.
- Goal of the environmental policy and how to achieve those goals.
- Stakeholders details
- Ensure your environmental policy is in compliance with all the relevant environmental legislations.
- Provide accurate information about efficient use of water and details about how to reduce water wastage.
- Provide accurate information about efficient use of materials.
- Information about re-usage, re-cycling and segregation of wastes.
- A method to ensure energy is used efficiently so that there is no energy wastage.
- Ensure minimize of VOC emissions.
- Information about providing training to employees on environmental policy.
- Information about encouraging all the employees to save energy, water and other valuable resources as a part of the environmental policy.
Ellery S. Gordon, who works as a law clerk in Los Angeles County has prepared many environmental policies. He has prepared many complicated drafts on environmental laws and is well aware of the format that needs to be followed when preparing a quality environmental policy. According to him, an environmental policy needs to be simple and clear in order to be effective.
It is very important for an environmental policy to be relevant to what the company does and it should cover almost all the environmental issues faced by the company.
Another important aspect of an environmental policy is that it must include realistic aims and goals so that it is possible to achieve them. Once the policy is drafted by the law clerk with the help of a lawyer or attorney, it needs to be endorsed by the managing director of the company to make it legal.
The organization has to make sure the environmental policy is properly communicated with all the employees of the organization, is publically available, and is included in the tenders and marketing materials of the organization.
By tying up with a professional lawyer or attorney, the organization needs to agree that they will review the environmental policy on a regular basis.
Conclusion
An experienced lawyer, with the help of law clerk, can prepare a well crafted environmental policy that handles all the environmental issues of the organization and specify how they plan to resolve the issues in future endeavors.