Hachioji City, a city in the west of Tokyo, introduced the Local Authority's Standard in Environment, commonly known as LAS-E, in December, 2006. LAS-E is an environmental management system established by The Coalition of Local Government for Environmental Initiative, Japan, consisting of 60 local governments actively addressing environmental issues. To date, ten governments including Hachioji City have introduced or plan to introduce LAS-E. Hachioji is the first to introduce LAS-E among Japanese cities with populations over a half million.

LAS-E is remarkably different from other environmental management systems, such as ISO14001, in the following points. It targets all communal facilities under the local government to improve the overall environment in the region. It also invites citizens to join in goal-setting and audit processes, aiming at cooperative work with the citizens in environmental management over governmental operations.

In fiscal 2007, based on the LAS-E standards, the city will work on targets including: energy and resource saving, such as reductions in electricity consumption and paper use at workplaces; waste reduction and full enforcement of recycling; promotion of green purchasing; switching to low emission vehicles; requests to vendors for eco-friendly awareness; and disclosure of environmental information.

The first audit by the citizens will be conducted at each public office in March, 2007, and the results will be made public.

http://www.city.hachioji.tokyo.jp/languages/english/index.html

Posted: 2007/03/15 03:05:32 PM
Japanese version

TAG Local government , System/Law