 Environmental aspect is an element of an organization's activities, products or services that has or may have an impact on the environment. This could be positive or negative. Contaminated spills and the planting of trees of both examples of environmental aspects. Identifying your environmental aspects will help you decide which business processes need monitoring and controlling. Identify areas that may be improved and find ways to control environmental risk. Not all environmental aspects will fall under your control. Those that do are known as direct aspects. For example, your site has backup diesel generators, which emit carbon dioxide causing pollution to land and air. Indirect aspects, on the other hand, are those that you may have influence over, but ultimately have no direct control. For instance, you need a scrap metal dealer to take away your scrap. However, you cannot control the emissions produced by your dealer's diesel vehicles or the long distance the vehicles travel back to the plant. But you can influence these aspects by choosing a firm that has an electric fleet and is based more locally. You therefore need to carry out an assessment to ensure these indirect aspects are identified, which will probably highlight some opportunities for improvement. To understand your environmental aspects, you need to examine all parts of your operation. You could do this by creating a process flow chart that works through each of your business's processes in order. Don't forget to consult people from different departments too. Once you've identified your aspects, you need to focus on the ones that are most significant. Significance will depend on whether the aspect causes environmental harm, how frequently it occurs, whether it needs to be controlled by law and if it could damage your organization's reputation. You can then start considering your working practices and decide if you can improve their environmental impact. Going forward, you should review your environmental aspects once a year or whenever your services, products or activities change.