Table of Contents
It is a globally recognised standard for developing and implementing environmental management systems (EMS). As such, the ISO 14001 criteria provide a structure and instructions for developing your environmental management system, ensuring that you do not overlook critical areas.
What Are Its Fundamentals?
It is the international standardisation for designing and executing an environmental policy. ISO (International Organisation for Standardisation) publishes the standard, an international organisation that develops and distributes internationally recognised standards. The iteration of the management system regulations, known as “ISO 14001:2015”, was issued in 2015. Before being released and revised, the measure was approved by a plurality of member countries. As a result, it’s become an internationally recognised standard acknowledged by most governments worldwide.
The number of firms adopting this term framework indicates a constant trend worldwide, according to this certification survey conducted at the end of 2017. The results for the past six years are listed below.
Why This Was Significant
Two of the most pressing concerns facing businesses today are environmental protection and preventing the company from exerting harmful influences on the environment. As such, one of the benefits of applying an EMS is getting recognised as one of the few companies that care enough to lessen their environmental impact. This can improve your company’s ties with consumers, the general public, and the community in general. Moreover, it also has other advantages.
In addition to a positive public image, many businesses can save money by using an erm framework. This can be accomplished by lowering the number of occurrences that result in liability expenses, obtaining insurance at a lower cost, and saving input energy and materials through reduction initiatives. This cost-cutting benefit should not be neglected when deciding whether or not to establish an erm framework.
How Does It Look Like in Practice?
The structure of this is divided into ten sections. The first three are introductory, while the last seven contain the environmental management system’s requirements. The seven significant sections are as follows:
Section 4: Organisational Context – The criteria for knowing your company to establish an EMS are discussed in this section. It outlines the requirements for recognising internal and external concerns, identifying relevant parties and their objectives, defining the EMS’s scope, and determining the EMS’s methods.
Section 5: Management – The leadership requirements address the necessity for top management to have a vital role in the EMS deployment. Top management must demonstrate EMS commitment by assuring environmental responsibility, creating and disseminating ecological policy, and allocating functions and duties across the firm.
Section 6: Planning – Top management must plan for the EMS’s continuous operation. Environmental objectives for development must be determined and plans made to achieve these objectives and the opportunities and risks of the EMS in the organisation. In addition, the company must analyse all of how its processes interact with and affect the environment and the regulatory and other obligations that the organisation must meet.
Section 7: Assistance – The support division is responsible for the management of all EMS resources, as well as standards for competence, awareness, communication, and document control.
Section 8: Operation – The operation requirements cover all parts of the pollution regulations required by organisational processes. There is a need to detect potential emergency cases and plan solutions to respond if one arises.
Section 9: Performance assessment – This section outlines the standards for determining whether or not your EMS is performing correctly. It entails tracking and evaluating your processes, determining environmental compliance, conducting internal audits, and conducting an ongoing EMS management review.
Section 10: Enhancement – This final section outlines the requirements for improving your EMS over time. This necessitates assessing process nonconformity and implementing process corrections.
These parts are based on the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle, which uses these aspects to change the organisation’s processes to generate and maintain improvements.
