What is the ISO 14001 Standards (EMS)?

ISO 14001 Environmental Management System (EMS)

ISO 14001 is a standard of requirements for Environmental Management System (EMS) and one of the most widely used standards among the other international standards. There are more than 300,000 organizations implementing ISO 14001 worldwide. It is designed for organizations that want to manage their environmental responsibilities in a systematic way that contributes to environmental sustainability. With the ISO 14001, the organization could achieve the intended outcomes which include environmental performance improvement, compliance duties fulfillment, and environmental goals achievement.

Who needs ISO 14001 Certification?

ISO 14001 was designed for any organization regardless of size, type, nature and applies to the environmental aspects of its activities, services, and products. The organization determines it can either control or influence considering a life cycle perspective. For example, the construction industry, recycle industry, the plastic industry, and the printing industry.

Benefits of implementing ISO 14001

The several benefits of implementing ISO 14001 could be:

Increase profitability
Better branding to access a bigger market
Reduce production waste
Avoid costly disposable hazardous or potentially polluting materials
Legal regulations are being monitored and measured to reduce the risk of prosecutions and fines.
Improved relationships and confidence of stakeholders through strategic communication.

History of ISO 14001

Before releasing the ISO 14001 Environmental Management Standard, the British Standards Institute (BSI Group) released BS 7750, which is the world’s first environmental management systems standard in response to growing demand from businesses seeking to establish their environmental requirements and comparisons of environmental effects between firms. In 1996, the foundation for the first version of ISO 14001 was built and created in early 1992.

The latest version of ISO 14001 released in 2015, ISO 14001:2015 has brought changes to the most frequent changes on Environmental Management System (EMS) which have a greater strategic focus and are easier to integrate with other ISO management system standards. Compared with the previous version in 2004, the ISO 14001 has now demonstrated a better strategic focus with the main added requirements such as:

Leadership and Commitment
Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) Cycle
Operation process
Environmental Performance
Communications

Certification process of ISO 14001

The organization that plans to get ISO 14001 can follow the ISO 14001 certification process below:

Organizations need to understand the ISO 14001 standards requirements.
Implement the ISO 14001 requirements in the organization’s process (Fine tune the internal procedure if needed)
Implementing the new procedure with ISO 14001 requirements
Select Internal audit team (require competency)
Conducting an internal audit to check on the implementation towards ISO 14001 certification
Top management review the result of ISO 14001 implementation, objective and other mentioned in clause 9.3 in the ISO 14001 standard
Appoint Accredited Certification Body for the external audit/3rd party audit.
Rectify the finding or non-conformity from the external audit/3rd party audit if there is
Award ISO 14001 certification

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ISO 14001

What is the ISO 14001 Standards (EMS)?

ISO 14001 is a standard of requirements for Environmental Management System (EMS) and one of the most widely used standards among the other international standards...