Environmental Management Systems: Enabling Tools Towards Sustainability?

Abstract

The implementation of Environmental Management Systems (EMS) has exponentially increased in the last decades, caused by heterogeneous pressures to companies. Coherently, the principles of Sustainability have largely been adopted by many businesses, in order to meet the present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The two systems and frameworks, EMS on one side and Sustainability on the other, seem to be somehow related to each other, since they more or less affect the environmental, social and economical aspects related to businesses. This chapter investigates on the bridge, if it really exists, between the two systems through a triple methodological approach: a quantitative literature review, a qualitative literature analysis and a case study. The results allow the authors to support the evidences that the EMSs are enabling tools toward sustainability, especially for the environmental and social pillars.