As of April 1, 2005, the OVWRC performs its daily operations using an Environmental Management System (EMS) following ISO 14001:2004. One of the centre's commitments is the continual improvement of the EMS. Therefore, all contractors, service providers and visitors are requested to read and abide by the requirements of the Environmental Policy Statement during visitations or while providing on-site services and/or products.

The Ottawa Valley Waste Management Board (OVWMB) is committed to "working together to walk lightly on the environment" with our community as a whole. We are dedicated to leadership and innovation in our field. As good corporate citizens, environmental protection is a core organizational objective and the responsibility of all our employees.

Our goal is to minimize our impact on the ecosystem, continually working to achieve and surpass our goals, and build upon efforts for pollution prevention and waste diversion. With our community, we are partners in environmental stewardship.

We will:

• Comply with all applicable environmental laws, regulations, OVWMB policies and other corporate requirements (i.e. ISO 14001);
  
• Practice pollution prevention through our actions, education, training and communication with our community, and encourage and welcome public participation;
  
• Reduce the impact to our landfill through preservation of landfill capacity through waste diversion activities;
  
• Minimize the regional impact to land through optimizing landfill practices and harmonizing regional waste management;
  
• Promote the efficient use and preservation of natural resources and energy through innovative 3Rs and composting programs for waste materials;
  
• Foster environmental management by involving our community as a whole (residents and commercial), and through our responsibility to ensure out-sourced services share our environmental management system values;
• Implement our environmental management system through programs and communications by setting appropriate goals, objectives and targets;
  
• Reduce the quantity of toxicity of materials used and waste generated from our communities;
  
• Link environmental management to occupational health and safety, and to the quality of our operations and products;
  
• Promote pride for a job well done and build upon support from community for environmental stewardship;
  
• Communicate our environmental management system to our community through our website, public liaison committee and The Valley Recycler newsletter;
  
• Monitor our impacts on the environment and performance through critical control points (i.e. landfill leachate, compost odours);
  
• Continuously work to improve the effectiveness of our environmental management system and thus, ensuring continued protection of the environment;
  
• Ensure all OVWRC employees understand, implement and maintain our environmental policy through their daily operational activities.