What Are Environmental Audits? What Are the Types?

Environmental Audits are a systematic process through which a company evaluates its compliance with established criteria, which may include legal requirements, standards, or demands defined by its clients or by the company itself.

Environmental auditing can be considered a tool for identifying, controlling, and monitoring the environmental aspects of companies. It is conducted in a clear and objective manner, and the results of the process are communicated to the interested parties.

According to ISO 14010, environmental auditing is defined as:

“a systematic and documented verification process carried out to obtain and objectively evaluate audit evidence in order to determine whether specified activities, events, management systems, and environmental conditions, or information related to them, comply with audit criteria, and to communicate the results of this process to the client.”

Classification of Environmental Audits

There are several types of environmental audits, which may be divided according to the parties involved and their objectives.

Classification According to the Parties Involved

Environmental audits may be classified as first-party, second-party, or third-party audits, as described below:

• First-party audit: conducted by the organization itself or on its behalf for internal purposes;

• Second-party audit: carried out by external organizations that have an interest in the company, such as clients;

• Third-party audit: performed by independent external auditing organizations, such as certification bodies that issue compliance certificates according to NBR ISO 14001 requirements.

Classification According to Objectives

Some examples of environmental audits according to their objectives are described below:

Legal Compliance Audit

The purpose of a legal compliance audit is to evaluate whether the company complies with the legal requirements applicable to its activities.

This type of audit is used by companies to prevent penalties resulting from non-compliance with environmental legislation. It may also be used to evaluate suppliers, aiming to verify whether partner companies comply with legal requirements.

To some extent, every environmental audit is based on evaluating legal compliance, since this is a fundamental organizational requirement.

One of the most important legal requirements for organizations is maintaining proper environmental licensing with the competent authorities.

Learn more about environmental licensing here.

Environmental Follow-Up Audit

The purpose of an environmental follow-up audit is to verify whether conditions established by guidelines, certifications, or internal policies are being fulfilled.

For example, a company seeking certification may have non-conformities and/or improvement points that need to be addressed in order to maintain its certification.

In this case, the follow-up audit verifies whether these identified issues have been resolved or are being monitored so that the company can obtain approval from the certification body.

Environmental Due Diligence (EDD)

The main objective of this type of audit is to evaluate the existence of environmental liabilities that may impact business transactions during mergers and acquisitions.

These audits may also be required by investors or banks during guarantee processes when they want to assess risks related to a particular company.

Environmental Due Diligence involves a historical review of land occupation, analysis of documentation and legislation applicable to the site and activities, and an assessment of the materiality of findings, possible costs, risks, and non-conformities.

Learn more about Due Diligence auditing here.

ISO 14001 Environmental Certification Audit

This type of audit aims to evaluate the company’s environmental management system compliance with the prerequisites established by ISO 14001 for certification purposes.

To achieve this, the company’s environmental policy, goals, controls, management commitment, responsibilities, and other related aspects are evaluated so the company may obtain ISO certification.

This is an example of a third-party audit, as previously mentioned, since it must be conducted by independent external auditing organizations.

In all these processes, the environmental auditor plays a fundamental role, as they are responsible for carrying out the evaluation according to the scope and objectives of the audit, contributing to compliance with proposed requirements and the continuous improvement of organizations.

RAÍZCON Environmental Consulting specializes in conducting environmental audits for a wide range of productive sectors. If you have any needs, contact us — we will be pleased to help!