Environmental Management System

Through our Acting Responsibly programme, environmental management is firmly embedded in NATS’ corporate philosophy.

We are already well advanced in our ability to deliver environmental improvements across our estate infrastructure and our airspace management activities. This is evidenced by our estate reductions in energy consumption, water usage and waste, and our delivery of airspace carbon dioxide and fuel burn efficiencies, underpinned by our strategic Air Traffic Management targets to help ensure the long-term sustainability of the aviation industry as a whole.

However, a further milestone on our journey is the implementation of an Environmental Management System (EMS) certified against the well-recognised international standard ISO 14001.

EMS certification to ISO 14001 will further demonstrate to employees and stakeholders NATS commitment to achieving the highest environmental standards. The benefits of this development are numerous, it will:

• Further embed environmental considerations into everything we do, enhancing our programme, and ensuring we focus priorities on our key sustainability issues
• Deliver improved environmental performance and costs efficiencies by reducing our impacts and our use of natural resources
• Help NATS manage compliance with environmental legislation as it evolves, by understanding how NATS activities may impinge on the environment, and what control measures are in place or need to be put into place
• Demonstrate NATS commitment to effective environmental management, and at the same time support our growth aspirations in commercial work by providing assurance to external stakeholders that NATS is managing its environmental activities and risks in a systematic manner.

In the last year, NATS have implemented an environmental management system for our UK operations. The first steps towards certification at our Corporate and Technical Centre have already been completed and the team will be progressing work towards our target for gaining certification by the end of 2014. Shortly after this we will be expanding the scope of certification out to our two major air traffic control centres, Swanwick and Prestwick.