Some environmental impacts are not suitable for evaluation by environmental efficiency
indicators. Hazardous emissions and use of some toxic substances must be limited
due to their health and environmental impacts. There may be legal, ethical or
ecological limits on parameters that should not be exceeded regardless of efficiency
or production rates. In these cases absolute indicators should be used in monitoring
the performance. Common toxic substances are often evident in many different
products and can be added up as a sum of the concentrations, Csubstance, times the
volume of each product, Vproduct. This has been tested for evaluation of biocide
use at one of the plants, as shown in Fig. 11.7. All fluids used contained mixtures
of the same biocide substances. The total biocide use in the process fluids is monitored
by using a calculation of the total volume of each substance:
[ ] substance product i substance V = Σ V *C i for all chemical products i
The goal is to monitor and reduce the overall use of toxic substances used. Field
surveys of personnel opinions suggest that biocides, amines and other volatile hazardous
substances should be monitored in this way.
With regular monitoring of the environmental performance there is also a need
for maintaining control over factors that influence environmental performance.
Organisation, financial incentives, development, communication and support
systems in the CMS partnership must be reviewed when contracts are renegotiated.