Environmental compliance

Our ambition at United is excellence in environmental compliance. We strive to go above and beyond, leveraging a robust environmental management system that supports our goal to do the right thing while maintaining efficient operations across the business.

This commitment is reflected across our compliance program which embeds excellence across our approach to compliance.

As environmental laws, regulations and associated risks constantly evolve, United’s Environmental Management System (EMS) aids in monitoring, managing and providing a systematic approach to assessing environmental risk and reducing United’s environmental impacts. The EMS system includes environmental policies, procedures, management of change and ongoing compliance tracking systems down to the individual station level.

Cyclical plan-do-check-act approach:

  • Plan
    • Assets
    • Activities
    • Impacts
    • Regulations
    • Objectives
  • Do
    • Standard Operating Procedures
  • Check
    • Auditing
    • Reporting
    • Data Analysis
    • Leadership Review
  • Act
    • Corrective Action
    • Impact Reduction
    • Engagement
    • Continual Improvement

We are leveraging innovation and technology to further automate our environmental management system and associated data collection, which will provide us the opportunity to monitor our performance in real-time, while collecting the data necessary to assess performance and to identify leading indicators that proactively identify environmental risk. The use of this technology will allow us to make better, more informed decisions related to mitigating environmental risk.

United’s Electronic Management Information System (EMIS) tools are electronic tools used to help manage our EMS. As of 2023, United has begun the process of transitioning to a new cloud-based electronic tool that will house our audit program, compliance and task tracking program, incident reporting, air emissions monitoring and reporting, management of change, and sustainability data management and reporting data. This tool will provide additional transparency of data and risk at a station and enterprise level, which will help better inform proactive actions and solutions to mitigate risk and implement best management practices within both our sustainability and compliance platforms. Full implementation of the new EMIS tool is anticipated by year-end 2025.

The use of technology to further automate our compliance management, assurance and data analysis, has also allowed for the ability to set company-wide, metric-based, internal goals designed to support operational excellence. These company-wide environmental goals, which are tied to executive compensation, foster ownership, accountability and continuous improvement throughout the company.