The application of environmental certification to the Province of Siena

The SPIn-Eco project has provided very broad and precise data collection regarding the Province of Siena. These data and their elaborations have also been developed as a basis for the environmental certification of this organization. In this way, the Administration of the Province of Siena (the first Province in Italy) has reached its goal of obtaining better knowledge of the state of the system and of constructing its environmental management system (EMS) according to the environmental aspects directly and indirectly arising from the organization's activities. Indirect aspects are mainly related to the territorial monitoring and planning. Indicators based on the classical pressure-state-response approach, as well as more complex ones based on CO, balance, emergy and ecological footprint analyses. have been used to assess the environmental performance of the EMS. This paper presents how this EMS is constructed, as well as the indicators that are used to analyze the system, paying particular attention to sustainability indicators. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.