ISO 14001 (Environmental)

Environmental Management

So, every organisation wants to be ‘green’ these days! ISO 14001 is the standard generally adopted in the UK by organisations wanting to ‘prove’ their green credentials. The standard is structured in a similar manner to ISO 9001, and includes subjects such as document control, internal auditing, management review etc., along with those specific to the environment.

Legislation

You must recognise environmental legislation; there will be many items of environmental legislation applicable to every organisation, such as: The Environmental Protection Act, The Environmental Protection (Duty of Care) Regulations, Waste (England & Wales) Regulations and The Regulatory Reform Fire Safety Order. A Legislative Register needs to list and cross-reference the legislation and be kept up to date.

Compliance

You must conduct compliance audits to ensure that your organisation is compliant with applicable legislation.

Legislation and Compliance are specific requirements of ISO 14001, but it’s a matter of fact that all organisations need to comply with legislation!

Impacts Register

You need to recognise Environmental Aspects (things you do with a relationship with the environment such as: waste disposal, fumes, use of resources, use of chemicals, transport/travel) and determine ‘failure modes’ (e.g. unnecessary use of electricity/fuel, incorrect waste disposal/segregation etc.) along with the resultant impact upon the environment (usually via a standard risk assessment technique). You may have noticed that the failure modes also have an impact upon your profit margin, and it’s a good idea to reduce the impact!

Duty of Care

Every organisation produces waste, and these waste streams must be recognised and reduced or eliminated if possible/practical. It’s a legal requirement that at least one of the waste streams must be segregated for re-use/recycling (e.g. using waste office paper for ‘note pads’ etc. Waste Transfer or Consignment Notes (Hazardous Waste) must be raised to cover all instances of waste being transferred to another organisation and kept as records. It is not acceptable to mix different types of hazardous waste or to mix with non-hazardous waste, and all waste must be correctly disposed of (e.g. do not pour waste paint/oil etc. to sink/drain without written Consent). Recent legislation requires that all your waste streams must be analysed against the ‘Waste Hierarchy Triangle’ with the intention of ‘moving‘ away form landfill and progressively towards ‘Prevention by Design’ (if practical, you must implement these steps).