The International Organisation for Regularisation defines the global standards for businesses. ISO standards that finish at “001” are recognised as management systems. However, ISO 14001 is used for environmental management systems as ISO 9001 is the standard for quality management systems, and 45001 is for safety and health management systems. Executing an Environmental Management System demonstrates the devotion and commitment of organisations to reduce the environmental impact that is caused by the production or organisational activities. Rules in the “ISO 14000 family” depends on the effective environmental management system. There are other standards in the 14,000 families such as 14004, 14006 and 14064-1 that counterpart ISO 14001 or take it a step further. Who Is Required to Have ISO 14001 Certifications? ISO 14001 is premeditated. However, many national and international companies increasingly require their suppliers to become an expert. Organisations must have the certification that your business follows to pre-approved standards of environmental performance and has procedures in place for compliance and development. However, it also demonstrates that your company is committed to specific environmental goals like waste minimisation, pollution prevention and climate change extenuating as well as has perspective on the properties of the life cycle and the value chain of a product/service. What’s the Procedure for Creating an Environmental Management System? An ISO 14001 standard for environmental management system (EMS) is all about increasing and documenting objectives and procedures, implementing them, monitoring and measuring their success, reporting results, maintaining them, then taking actions to improve the processes of reducing environmental impact. Some of the elements of the EMS include improving procedures for: • Defining and documenting your environmental policy • Leadership and commitment • The scope of the EMS • Organisational roles and responsibilities • Identifying risks, threats, and opportunities • Creating environmental goals and plan for achieving them • Identifying environmental aspects and impacts • Resources • Competence, training records, skills, experience, and qualifications • Internal and external communication • Operational control • Document control • Emergency preparedness and response • Compliance obligations and evaluation • Internal auditing the EMS and the results from this • Monitoring and measuring results • Management review results • Nonconformity and corrective action and • Continual improvement. How Can Your Business Be Certified? Once you have your processes developed, you will need to conduct an internal audit of the methods. From this point, twists are made, and scarcities are corrected. An external audit is next, that is, a third-party auditor such as ISI will analyse your system to verify that it complies with the requirements. After the external review, corrections are made before an ISO certification agency does the final certification audit. ISO 14001:2015 The latest version of ISO 14001 is 14001:2015. Any company with the original 2004 certification had until September 15, 2018, to improve to the newest version. Therefore, the 2004 version is now out of date. As with the new ISO standards such as safety standard 45001, the 2015 revision increases emphasis on a commitment from company management. ISO is required to be more conspicuous in an organisation’s strategic direction, and stakeholder-focused communication is essential. Other amendments require practical initiatives for protecting the environment from harm and degradation and need companies to consider a life cycle, that is, how the entire process from development to end-of-life can affect the environment. Benefits of an EMS Even if you are not required to have ISO 14001 authorisation, developing an environmental management system can be helpful for your company’s image. Having processes in place can help advance your overall environmental compliance. It can guide and give your company workers a roadmap of how to manage environmental problems, which can be helpful in times of employee turnover. Apart from this, let’s quickly summarise the benefits that can be obtained from implementing an EMS: • Improved environmental performance • Cost savings • Improved resource efficiency • New tenders or customers can be attracted • Competitive advantage over rivals who do not comply with EMS • Reduced risks and costs of non-compliance with environmental legislation Conclusion An EMS will support and ensure systems which are continuously improved and evaluated. Furthermore, there may be additional cost benefits through pollution prevention, increased efficiencies, consistency, better resource management, and good public relations. Nevertheless, EMS ensures customers of organisations that they are responsible and committed to look after the sustainability of the environment.
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