Given the international reputation of ISO standards, ISO 14001 certification represents a great option for organizations seeking to prove their commitment to sustainability. To achieve certification of your environmental management system (EMS), however, you must meet the framework’s holistic requirements regarding environmental issues.
And, if you’re familiar with—or have already undergone—any other kind of ISO certification, you likely understand that it’s no easy task to stand up an entire management system of any kind to meet every ISO standard’s comprehensive requirements.
But whether you’ve determined that the benefits outweigh the effort or your customers have specifically requested you achieve ISO 14001 certification, as a Certification Body experienced in these assessments, we’re here to make your EMS implementation a little easier.
In this blog post, we’ll break down the ISO 14001 clauses and their requirements, as well as some basic strategies for compliance, so that as you move forward in building out your EMS, you’ll already understand what it’ll need to do to achieve the certification your customers want to see from you.
What is ISO 14001?
First published in 1996, revised in 2004, and again in 2015, ISO 14001 helps organizations improve their environmental performance by implementing the standard’s guidelines for the establishment, implementation, and ongoing maintenance of an EMS.
ISO 14001 refers to three intended outcomes of an environmental management system:
- Improving an organization’s environmental performance
- Meeting an organization’s compliance objectives
- Achieving an organization’s environmental objectives
A combination of internal policies, systems, and processes will help your EMS achieve those outcomes, thereby enabling you to manage your organization’s environmental issues through more efficient use of resources and reduction of waste.
What is the ISO 14001 Framework?
But for your EMS to actually do that—both protect the environment and achieve certification—will mean bringing it into compliance with ISO 14001’s key clauses, each of which outlines specific requirements you must meet when establishing, implementing, maintaining, and improving your EMS.
Because every ISO standard begins with a standardized explanation of the boundaries, normative references, and terms & definitions relevant to each particular management system in clauses 1-3, we’ll begin our deep dive with Clause 4.
Context of the Organization (Clause 4)
What It Requires: Determination of the scope of your EMS through an analysis of areas that include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Internal and external issues (e.g., important issues that can affect, either positively or negatively, the EMS, as well as those that are relevant to its purpose that can affect the ability to achieve the intended outcomes of the EMS)
- Identification of interested stakeholders (internal and external) and their requirements, and understanding of your legal, regulatory, and contractual obligations related to the environment.
Why is This Important? Every management system is tailored to the organization’s specific needs and circumstances, but you can only get started in such tailoring by establishing this context, which will enable you to hone in on relevant environmental risks.
Starter Strategies for Compliance:
- Define the boundaries of your EMS—or, the systems, people, and processes involved
- Identify internal and external stakeholders
- Document any applicable environmental laws, regulations, and contracts
Leadership (Clause 5)
What It Requires: Top management to demonstrate commitment to the EMS.
Why is This Important? As with all ISO standards, their comprehensive nature demands that your organization fully commit to upholding the framework, and that starts at the top—while management has specific roles to play within the EMS, strong leadership and their buy-in also ensure a culture of prevalent environmental consciousness among employees.
Starter Strategies for Compliance:
- Develop and document a clear environmental policy that includes commitments to protect the environment, fulfill compliance obligations, and continually improve the EMS to enhance your organization’s environmental performance
- Designate roles for ownership of the EMS, as well as the appropriate resources for environmental initiatives
- Ensure leadership is accountable for and communicates the importance of effective environmental management
Planning (Clause 6)
What It Requires: Identification of your environmental risks and opportunities, environmental aspects—including significant aspects—and impacts, compliance obligations, planning action, and environmental objectives.
Why is This Important? Planning is important with any compliance initiative, but with ISO 14001, the environmental aspects are, of course, particularly critical—these being the elements of your organization’s activities, products, or services that can interact with and potentially affect the condition of the air, water, land, flora, or fauna, including :
- Emissions to air
- Releases to water
- Releases to land
- Use of raw materials and natural resources
- Use of energy
- Energy emitted
- Generation of waste and/or by-products
- Use of space
The significance of these aspects will vary between each organization, so a consistent and reliable methodology for determining such implications must be established—also take care to consider the entire lifecycle of stages of your activities, products, or services that can be controlled or influenced. All this required planning should help you proactively identify and focus your organization’s limited resources on mitigating adverse environmental effects and pursuing more sustainable avenues.
Starter Strategies for Compliance:
- Develop an assessment process to determine the environmental risks and opportunities;
- Determine and document environmental aspects and impacts;
- Establish criteria for determining the significance of environmental aspects
- Determine and document compliance objectives
- Set and record measurable environmental objectives with corresponding action plans
Support (Clause 7)
What It Requires: Evidence of sufficient employee awareness and competence, as well as other resources that support effective implementation and maintenance of your EMS.
Why is This Important? The kind of support stipulated in this clause will ensure that your EMS is bolstered in its efforts to effectively manage environmental risks by skilled personnel and an environmentally conscious culture.
Starter Strategies for Compliance:
- Conduct and document regular environmental awareness campaigns and training
- Allocate budget for periodic environmental initiatives
Operation (Clause 8)
What It Requires: The establishment, implementation, and maintenance of processes for operational control of your environmental impact, as well as an emergency preparedness and response plan.
Why is This Important? Meeting these requirements ensures that procedures are put into practice to effectively mitigate environmental risks.
Starter Strategies for Compliance:
- Establish, implement, and maintain:
- Operational controls to ensure environmental requirements are addressed
- An emergency preparedness and response plan to address emergencies that have the potential for adverse environmental impact
Performance Evaluation (Clause 9)
What It Requires: Periodic assessments of the performance of your EMS to ensure its effectiveness and ongoing alignment with your organizational objectives.
Why is This Important? One of the staples of ISO 14001 is the idea that your EMS continually improves and adapts to both emerging issues and your business objectives— regular evaluation of your EMS performance helps you identify what changes must be made so that everything continues to serve each other.
Starter Strategies for Compliance:
- Use key performance indicators (KPIs) to assess the effectiveness of your EMS
- Conduct internal EMS audits
- Ensure management performs regular management reviews to ensure leadership is aware of and has an influence on key EMS results and go-forward decisions
Improvement (Clause 10)
What It Requires: Continual enhancement of your EMS through the identification and mitigation of nonconformities, implementation of corrective actions, and learning from past experiences.
Why is This Important? Clause 9 requires the identification of the areas for improvement—Clause 10 requires that you take related action on those findings to ensure your EMS adapts to the evolving environmental landscape and remains effective.
Starter Strategies for Compliance:
- Establish a process for identifying and correcting nonconformities
- Analyze root causes of environmental incidents
- Implement preventive measures to avoid recurrence
- Establish a process for continual improvement of the EMS
Take the Next Steps Toward an ISO 14001 Certification
If your organization is seeking ISO 14001 certification, you’ll have an extensive lift ahead of you in implementing a fully compliant EMS given the holistic requirements you’ll need to meet. But now that you understand more of what the standard asks, you can get started in meeting those expectations.
That being said, you may want to invest in added assurance before committing to certification—a readiness, or gap, assessment before your certification audit can help determine where your EMS doesn’t quite meet the requirements so that you can address those issues before commencing the certification process.
To learn more about the potential of gap assessments and how Schellman can help with your ISO 14001 goals, contact us today.
About Nisha Ellis
Nisha Ellis is a Senior Manager with Schellman based in Atlanta, GA. Prior to joining Schellman in 2019, Nisha worked as an IT Staff Auditor, for a large accounting firm specializing in SOC 1 and SOC 2 reports and Financial Audit and Support for Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) audits. Nisha has over 4 years of experience comprised of serving clients in various industries, including financial services, manufacturing, and entertainment. Nisha is now focused primarily on SOC 1 and SOC 2 audits for organizations across various industries.