Mikael on the environmental audit
During the past week, the external auditors have visited CBH's management and two of our departments: Protein Science and Industrial Biotechnology. Many thanks to everyone who has been involved during the week and we received very nice feedback from the auditors.
The work with lab safety and chemical handling was especially highlighted and I hope that our new (Aj & Oj) can further contribute to strengthening this work. We see that we are now reporting more of the incidents, which is positive; not that there are more incidents but that these are reported, which we all want to encourage as in the long run it leads to a safer work environment.
KTH's environmental management system is reviewed once a year by external environmental auditors. The external review of KTH's sustainability work also contributes to openness and transparency, which is an important issue for the principle of openness and democracy. The external environmental auditors carry out system audits. This means that they revise how the systematic environmental work is carried out in accordance with the routines/processes and the documentation that has been established for our environmental management system. They can e.g. ask questions about how the systematic work of integrating sustainable development into education or the action work to achieve the sustainability goals goes in practice. They can also ask about the handling of chemicals and waste. If there are no routines or we cannot show that there is documentation that verifies that our routines are followed, we can receive deviations or suggestions for improvement. These need to be remedied within a certain time after the audit.
A certified environmental management system (ISO 14001) creates credibility for KTH's sustainability work and it is important that the environmental management system is integrated into ordinary business processes.
Mikael