Compliance Incentives and Auditing

Compliance Incentives are a set of policies and programs that eliminate, reduce or waive penalties under certain conditions for business, industry, and government facilities which voluntarily discover, promptly disclose, correct noncompliance, and prevent future environmental violations. Information about these incentives, self-disclosure programs, related tools such as environmental audit protocols, Environmental Management Systems, Pollution Prevention, other innovation projects and programs and the environmental benefits achieved by such programs are located here. EPA is committed to exploring new and creative ways of achieving environmental results. This topic includes information on innovative enforcement and compliance approaches.

Compliance Incentives -- EPA promotes compliance by providing compliance incentives -- policies and programs that reduce or waive penalties under certain conditions for business, industry, and government facilities that voluntarily discover, promptly disclose, and expeditiously correct environmental problems.

Innovations -- EPA is committed to exploring new and creative ways of achieving environmental results and making them a routine part of our work. EPA has adopted a problem solving approach to address environmental problems that involves using several tools - ranging from compliance assistance to incentives and auditing to compliance monitoring to civil enforcement to criminal enforcement.

Auditing -- discusses the Audit Policy, which provides major incentives for regulated entities that voluntarily discover, promptly disclose, correct noncompliance, and prevent future environmental violations.

Environmental Management Systems -- Environmental Management Systems (EMSs) can be an effective tool for organizations to improve their overall environmental performance, improve compliance, and prevent pollution. Since the goal of the Pollution Prevention Act is to stop pollution and waste before it is created, EMSs are one method that can be used to achieve this goal in addition to that of overall environmental compliance.

Pollution Prevention -- focuses on stopping pollution and waste before it is created. EPA's pollution prevention (P2) program is designed to help get pollution prevention concepts and principles into the daily operations of government agencies, businesses, manufacturers, nonprofit organizations, and individuals.

Small Business -- promotes environmental compliance among small businesses (those with 100 or fewer employees) by providing incentives to discover and correct environmental problems.

Small Community -- encourages states to respond to a small community's environmental violations with comprehensive compliance assistance.