Important Milestones For Protecting The Environment Environmentally Responsible Procurement Policy In the past year, we established an Environmentally Responsible Procurement Policy. This new policy requires us to consider the environmental implications of purchasing different products and services. These practices will bring about significant benefits to the environment because we will look into the environmental impacts of goods and services during their full life cycle. We are a major indirect buyer in the marketplace and this allows us to influence our suppliers, contractors and service providers to adopt environmentally responsible business processes and supplies. Environmental Emergency Response Plans We have identified our risks and now have Environmental Emergency Response Plans. These allow us to respond to any environmental accident that might occur. There are proactive measures to minimise the risk of an environmental accident occurring. We will ask our contractors to provide emergency response plans as part of their environmental management plans. We will also provide action plans and training to front-line staff to make sure that Emergency Response Plans can be swiftly carried out. Environmental Information System (EnvIS) We are moving ahead with the development of our Environmental Information System (EnvIS). It is being developed as an interactive central resource for registering our environmental commitments and tracking performance. Already, it is capable of aiding our environmental management in some areas. A Healthy Living Environment For Our Residents Radon Monitoring Our work to ensure that our residents have a healthy living environment continued last year with our work to check radon levels in housing estates. We conducted detailed tests on 100 flats in 25 estates. We found that radon levels in occupied flats remained at safe levels and posed no danger. In vacant flats, we found higher radon levels and therefore recommended good ventilation. Traffic Noise Abatement Measures We have been conducting road traffic noise impact assessments for our new projects. In the past year we finished studying the effectiveness of different traffic noise abatement measures. We are using our findings to draw up new design guidelines for preventing excessive road traffic noise reaching our tenants. Next Page >Back to Top 2001 Housing Authority. All rights reserved.