Subscribe to our mailing list
For business updates, blog posts and all things concerning business and ISO systems.
ISO 14001 is one standard in a family of standards that exist to help organisations understand how their operations:
Following the success of BS 5750 the British Standard Institute set about creating an equivalent standard focusing on the environmental impacts of a company’s activities. This standard was called BS 7750 and was originally released in 1994. Like BS 5750 before, BS 7750 was adopted by the International Standards Organisation renamed ISO 14001 and published in 1996. Just two years after the BSI launch!
Essentially, the standard requires the company to look at and assess the environmental impacts of its activities. Having assessed and understood the scale of the organisation’s environmental impacts, the company would then seek to create objectives and targets in order to improve their organisation performance and reduce their environmental footprint.
The duration for obtaining ISO 14001 is likely to depend on the activities that the company is involved in and how well it currently meets regulatory requirements. Hopefully, obviously it will be appreciated that obtaining ISO 14001 registration is likely to take longer for a large chemical plant than it would for a small employment agency.
Typical duration for obtaining registration would be anything between six months to a year.
There are a number of stages in the process of obtaining ISO 14001 and they include:
The people that will need to be involved in an ISO 14001 initiative are likely to depend on the activities that you undertake, but as a general rule is likely to include:
Many companies want to grow and expand which obviously creates a tension with improved environmental performance. One way to reduce this tension is to think about “normalising” objectives and targets. That is, to expand you may need to drive greater distances to see more clients using more fuel, so, your absolute fuel consumption will increase. Normalising your activities would be about reducing the footprint “per person” showing that you are becoming more effective and more efficient. Setting objectives in this way is often done in a per person basis but also could be normalised via; average monthly sales, number of clients, volume of products or raw materials used, or some other metric specific to your operation.
Clearly, given the certification process you will need to show:
Obviously, the chosen assessment agency will also check at least annually that your environmental processes and practises remain in place and robust with an external audit.
Statius can help with a number of aspects regarding the ongoing development and improvement of environmental management systems, for instance:
In short, Statius can become your internal environmental manager and do as much, or as little as you require, in order to assist with the ongoing development of your management system.
For business updates, blog posts and all things concerning business and ISO systems.
© 2024 ISO Consultants by Statius
All Rights Reserved