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ISO 14001

More Updates on ISO 14001:2015

As the release of the new Version of ISO 14001 nears, impacted organizations should start preparing themselves for the important changes that will be required. As it has been 10 years since the current Version of ISO 14001:2004 was released, it is apparent that with new release of the second Committee Draft (CD2) will bring significant changes.

As mentioned in the past, development of the new version began in early 2012 and is expected to be officially released in January 2015.

As with any new version of a standard, organizations currently certified to ISO 14001:2004 will be granted a transition period to allow for upgrade to the new standard. Quality Resource Center will release a transition guideline to all certified clients after publication of the standard.

To help organizations become familiar with the proposed upcoming changes, some of the key changes have been identified below.

The Scope shall not exclude activities, products and services within the organization’s control or influence that can have significant environmental aspects (see 6.1.4).

Structural Changes

Key Changes in Requirements

  1. Scope
  2. Normative References
  3. Terms and Definitions
  4. Context of the Organization
  5. Leadership
  6. Planning
  7. Support
  8. Operation
  9. Performance Evaluation
  10. Improvement

Additional language will require –

  • Determinations regarding how the organization will integrate its environmental management system requirements into its business processes.
  • Requiring Top Management demonstrate leadership and commitment with respect to the environmental management system
  • Organizations determine significant environmental aspects and organizational risks and opportunities by assuring the environmental management system can achieve its intended outcome(s), preventing, reducing, or eliminating undesired effects, satisfying its compliance obligations, and achieving continual improvement.
  • Actions to address significant environmental aspects, compliance obligations and organizational risks and opportunities shall be managed within the environmental management system. This must include consideration of environmental objectives and planning to achieve them (6.2.2), operational planning and control (8.1), value chain control (8.2), emergency preparedness and response (8.3), and monitoring and measurement (9.1).
  • Determinations regarding how the processes associated with its operation that are related to its significant environmental aspects and organizational risks and opportunities will be controlled or influenced, taking into account life cycle perspective.

That’s it for now….more when information becomes available.

ISO 14001:2015 Update – Where Are We?

ISO 14001:2004 is being revised. The International Organization for Standardization working group responsible for revising the text has already met and has produced a draft which is now being circulated for comment to its member bodies.

Since the inception of ISO 14001, more than 300,000 organizations worldwide have implemented the standard, the market-leading certification-system for environmental-management systems.  Its’ popularity is the result of the continued efforts of the committee to revise, maintain, and update the standard, keeping it current relevant ecological, political and social developments.

As the previous revision dates back several years, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has  announced the next version for 2015 and recently provided an insight into the changes by publishing a so-called “Committee Draft“.

The latest draft of the revised ISO 14001:2015 is being circulated to ISO’s members for comment and the working group undertaking the revision met at the end of February to address the responses to this consultation. The output from that meeting will be a “Draft International Standard”, which will undergo a full public consultation in Q2 next year, with the resulting revised published in mid-2015.

ISO 14001:2015 will have a new structure and “common text”, following new ISO guidelines for all management systems standards. Furthermore, it will address the recommendations from the ISO “Future Challenges” study for the adoption of various new approaches and methods in the field of EMS.

The Future Challenges study recommended that consideration be given in the revision of ISO 14001 to the content of ISO 26000 – Guidance on Social Responsibility, which considers the environment as the “planet” element of the “People, Planet and Profit” model. Future Challenges suggests that 14001 should address the environmental principles in ISO 26000 and also consider aligning its language.

The four environmental themes considered in ISO 26000 are:

  1. Prevention of pollution (waste and emissions);
  2. Sustainable resource use (materials, energy and water consumption);
  3. Climate change and mitigation (GHG);
  4. Protection of the environment and restoration of natural habitats (ecosystems, biodiversity, land and natural resources, urban and rural development).

More to come as Quality Resource Center has identified the major changes, and we will be publishing another in the series of soon to help you understand the key aspects of this new revision.

Understanding ISO 14001

ISO 14000 is a family of International Standards related to environmental management systems that assist organizations in –

  1. minimize how their operations (processes etc.) negatively affect the environment (i.e. cause adverse changes to air, water, or land);
  2. comply with applicable laws, regulations, and other environmentally oriented requirements, and
  3. continually improve in the above

 

ISO 14000 is similar to ISO 9000 quality management in that both describe the process of how a product is produced, rather than the product itself. As with ISO 9000, the certification is performed by third-party organizations rather than being awarded by ISO directly. The ISO 19011 audit standard applies when auditing for both 9000 and 14000 compliance at once.

Requirements of ISO 14001 are an integral part of the European Union‘s Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS). EMAS‘s structure and material requirements are more demanding, foremost concerning performance improvement, legal compliance and reporting duties.

The concept of an environmental management system evolved in the early nineties and its origin can be traced back to 1972, when the United Nations organized a Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) was launched.  These early initiatives led to the establishment of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) and the adoption of the Montreal Protocol and Basel Convention.

In 1992, the first Earth Summit was held in Rio-de-Janeiro, and served to generate a global commitment to the environment. In the same year, BSI Group published the world’s first environmental management systems standard, BS 7750. This created the model for the development of the ISO 14000 series in 1996 by the International Organization for Standardization.

As of 2010, ISO 14001 was in use by at least 223 149 organizations in 159 countries and economies.

Development of the ISO 14000 series

The ISO 14000 family includes most notably the ISO 14001 standard, which forms the foundation for organizations for the design and implementation of an effective environmental management system. Other standards included in this series are ISO 14004, which provides additional guidelines for good environmental management system practices. The critical objective of the ISO 14000 series of is “to promote more effective and efficient environmental management in organizations and to provide useful and usable tools – ones that are cost effective, system-based, flexible, and reflect the best organizations and the best organizational practices available for gathering, interpreting and communicating environmentally relevant information”.

Unlike previous “command and control” type environmental regulations, ISO 14000 was based on a voluntary approach to environmental regulation. The series includes the ISO 14001 standard, which provides guidelines for the establishment or improvement of an EMS. ISO 14001 shares many commonalities with its predecessor, ISO 9000, the international standard of quality management, which served as a model for its internal structure. Both standards can be implemented side by side, or as part of an integrated system. As with ISO 9000, ISO 14000 acts both as an internal management tool as well as a mechanism for demonstrating a company’s environmental commitment to its customers and clients.

Prior to the development of the ISO 14000 series, organizations opted to voluntarily design and develop their own EMS systems. However, this made comparisons of environmental effects between companies challenging, and therefore the ISO 14000 series was developed.

An EMS is defined by ISO as: “part of the overall management system that includes organizational structure, planning activities, responsibilities, practices, procedures, processes and resources for developing, implementing, achieving and maintaining the environmental policy”.