Analysis of Environmental Policy Tools

Increasing pollution, strong competitive tension over consumers in the goods and services markets, customer pressure, continuous tightening of environmental legislation and efforts to reduce costs are just a few of the many factors that lead businesses to enhance their sustainability profile and drive them to eliminate the negative impacts of their activities on the environment. Business strategies, goals and tools have changed as a result of an ongoing effort to get deeper knowledge and understanding of the negative consequences of these processes to life of societies; this all contributes to an improvement of local and global environmental problems. The current stage is characterized by the transition from subsequent solutions to an already existing problem to a prevention strategy. For this reason, many companies implement, in addition to their legislative obligations, and as a part of socially responsible behavior, a range of voluntary tools, of which an application of the environmental management system according to the international standard ISO 14001 or EMAS dominate for non-manufacturing companies. Because of this, companies can apply a comprehensive and consistent approach to environmental care and thus reduce the negative impact of their activities on the environment. The major goal of this Thesis is to analyze, in the context of the Czech Republic environmental policy, environmental activities and policy of a major consulting company KPMG Czech Republic; this research is based on comprehensive depicting of relevant environmental issues and tools applied by the government within environmental policy of the Czech Republic. A specific focus on the environmental management system applied by the studied company provides an opportunity to suggest its further improvement.