5 Minute Guide to ISO 14001
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First of all, let me explain a little about the requirements of ISO
14001:2004.
At the top level, it requires that you:
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State your policy for
your environmental management system (which must include a commitment to
prevent pollution and to continually improve your environmental management
system)
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Identify all laws,
regulations, codes of practice and other requirements which are
environmentally related
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Monitor your level of
compliance with the requirements
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Identify the aspects
of your business which have a significant impact on the environment and those
that it can control or influence
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Identify targets
including commitments to avoid pollution and to improve (i.e. reduce) its
environmental impact
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In support of this, the
standard requires that you
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have sufficient
resources to meet the above requirements, including suitably trained people.
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Define and communicate
the roles, responsibilities and authorities of people involved in the system
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Have suitable
communication systems within your organization
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ISO14001 requires that you
- have procedures for control of
documents & records (identical to ISO9000 requirements)
- identify operations that are "associated
with identified significant environmental aspects", and that you
control them appropriately
- plan for emergency situations (e.g.
where an accident results in an event which would cause pollution, etc)
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Having set the above in action, the
standard then requires that you monitor and measure the "key
characteristics" of your operations that could have a significant
environmental impact.
You are required to evaluate your
compliance with your own targets, and with legal and other requirements, and to
use that information to improve your systems.
Internal audits must be conducted (e.g.
by experts such as us, (hint!) and the results of those audits should be acted
on as appropriate.
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When things go wrong, you must take action
to prevent or minimise or rectify any environmental impact. (Clear it up, stop
it escaping , repair the damage caused, etc). You must keep records of what
happened, what actions were taken and how well they worked. You should also see
what you can do to stop it from happening again.
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As with ISO9000 and other management system
standards, Top Management are required to review the effectiveness of the system
and to establish plans for improving it.
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The standard specifies a number of
procedures that you organization must have (although it does not specifically
require them to be documented). It specifies various types of records that must
be maintained.
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There are many other actions that the standard requires, but there is no requirement for these to controlled by procedures (unless you decide that it would be useful to have an instruction
that describes the activities), nor that any records need be kept of the actions being conducted. So long as the actions are conducted and you can explain how you conduct them, the requirements of ISO
14001:2004
are being achieved.
As an overview, the standard requires that you
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identify how your
business adversely affects the environment and also which laws are relevant
to the operations of the business.
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plan how you control your
processes so as to minimise the environmental impact.
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monitor the
effectiveness of the system at meeting legal and other requirements as well
as your own targets.
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analyse the results and use them to continually improve
your systems.
OK! The five minutes are up.
Thank you for your time, and I hope that this document has been of some use to you.
Dr Terry Russell
Email click
here
 
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on Nov 03, 2007