Leading Environmental Compliance - A New Zealand Government Initiative
The New Zealand Ministry for Education has been proactively working with state schools in the country conducting a full environmental audit of all schools to identify actual and potential environmental impacts from the school activities. The initial environmental audit investigated discharges to air, land and water, ground and surface water takes, onsite septic tanks, solid waste disposal, agrichemical and pesticide application.
This paper sets out the issues, challenges and successes faced by a progressive government organisation in ensuring compliance of all New Zealand state schools with the National Environmental Standard for air quality. The NES was introduced in 2004, Regulation 11 banned the use of school incinerators for disposing of solid waste. Schedule 1 sets out ambient air concentration limits for a series of common contaminants, including PM10 effective as of 1 september 2006. The nationwide project has had a significant impact on the way schools manage their environmental impacts and has resulted in significant improvements in air quality emissions from school operations amongst other environmental improvements. The impact of the NES and the criteria that had to be developed for regulatory applications is discussed in the paper.