In Implementing
ISO 14000, Tom Tibor and Irwin Feldman, eds. Irwin Professional Publishing, 1997.
A Strategic Approach to ISO 14001
Professor Burton Hamner, Asian Institute of Management
Executive Summary
Is ISO 14001 a cost or an investment? The answer depends on the approach taken by
organizations to implement it. If the ISO environmental management system (EMS) is focused
on compliance assurance, it will be an expense whose major benefit will be potential
liability reductions. In developing countries where recognition of the business benefits
of improved environmental performance is very low, this compliance-focused approach
appears to be the dominant one. If the system is focused on improved production processes
and product designs, then it can significantly prevent pollution, reduce operating costs
and potential liabilities, and also increase customer satisfaction and market share. In
developed countries, many companies recognize that ISO can be a basis for moving far
beyond compliance. However, a more pro-active EMS requires more time and money to create.
Is a certified EMS necessary? A pro-active EMS that produces real results may be quite
satisfactory to stakeholders, who could care less about the system itself and want to know
what is being accomplished. With such a system, ISO certification may not be necessary for
an environmentally progressive organization that can effectively communicate its
successes.
However, the ISO EMS framework is a good one. Organizations seeking a strategic
position on ISO 14001 should begin developing pollution prevention practices that generate
real results, within an ISO-influenced framework. Then they will reap the benefits of
improved environmental performance as well as be prepared to pursue ISO certification
should market demands make it necessary.
Introduction
The challenge of responding to the new ISO 14001 Environmental Management
Systems (EMS) standard is on the agenda of industry and their environmental stakeholders.
Customers, governments, communities, public interest groups and others may ask for ISO
14001 certification to demonstrate that environmental responsibilities are being managed
in an organized and serious fashion. But developing an EMS that meets the ISO 14001
requirements is a significant undertaking, and obtaining ISO certification of the EMS will
require additional effort and cost—especially if an outside certifying body is to
audit the EMS and verify that it meets the ISO requirements.
The ISO 14001 EMS standard only specifies the structure of the EMS. The content is up
to the organization. In other words, the organization decides what it wants to do
regarding the environment, and the EMS organizes the tasks necessary to accomplish this.
Only if the organization focuses the EMS on specific operational practices can operating
costs be reduced and environmental risks be minimized.
Issues in ISO 14001 Certification
ISO standards are developed in a consensual process by voluntary participants.
The ISO 14001 standard is being developed by representatives from industry and standards
organizations around the world. Although the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been
a participant, in general, government environmental agencies and environmental public
interest groups have not been actively involved in the development of the standard. This
has significant implications, particularly by public interest groups, for the acceptance
of the standards in the future.
The ISO 14001 EMS standard is intended to be applicable to any organization of any
size, anywhere. Accordingly, it provides a very general structure for an EMS. It does not
require that an organization implement any particular environmental management strategies.
It only requires that organizations have a commitment to compliance, continual
improvement, and pollution prevention. "Commitment" is not defined by ISO, but
it is expected that an organization which makes a policy commitment will be able to
demonstrate to interested parties that the commitment is in fact being implemented. This
will be a necessary condition for achieving ISO certification of an EMS.
Variation in the Perceived Quality of the EMS
Standard
Because the EMS standard is very general, organizations will develop and
implement EMS that are focused on operations of a particular interest. For instance, one
company that is a retailer of clothes and does no manufacturing may have an EMS largely
focused on the environmental behavior of its suppliers. Another company that produces
hazardous chemicals may have an EMS focused on designing more environmentally friendly
products and on recovery and recycling of the product.
This means that one ISO EMS cannot be compared to another ISO EMS—except that both
meet the structural requirements of ISO and the certifying body has determined that the
policy, objectives and targets of the EMS are in fact being met. In order to answer the
question, "Is the company being environmental responsible regarding various
topics," the observer needs to know exactly what the company's EMS is trying to
accomplish. The fact that the EMS is certified only means that the company's system is
designed to achieve continual improvement along environmental vectors of concern to the
company. If reducing compliance violations is the only concern, then continual reductions
in violations would appear to meet this specification.
ISO 14001 requires a commitment to compliance with applicable laws and regulations.
These will differ widely from country to country. Accordingly, organizations in countries
with very few environmental regulations may be able to meet the compliance commitment with
relatively little effort. In countries with no laws regarding the disposal of toxic waste,
for example, an organization's EMS does not have to address this subject unless it is
subject to other rules, for example the internal rules of multinational corporations.
In summary, ISO certification does not enable an outside party to determine if one
organization is more "eco-friendly" than another or if an organization is making
significant progress towards being more "eco-friendly." Organizations that want
to convince stakeholders they are eco-friendly will need to provide information about what
exactly their EMS is doing, not just provide evidence that their EMS is certified to ISO
standards.
Potential Reaction from Public Interest Groups
There are some indications that public interest groups are beginning to take
a hostile attitude towards ISO 14001 because certification to the standard does not enable
stakeholders to determine whether an organization is really eco-friendly. In Europe, a
major public interest group has accused the global ISO 14001 standards of being an attempt
to weaken European environmental management standards that are already in place. There
appears to be a possibility that some environmental advocates could view ISO 14001
certification as a "smokescreen," used by organizations that are not really
interested in environmental improvement, but that are simply making sure that their
environmental affairs are under control. The next few years will be a watershed in the
acceptance of ISO 14001 certification.
Developing Countries and ISO 14001: The Case
of Southeast Asia
Since 1993 the author has been providing pollution prevention training
and factory consultations to companies in Southeast Asia, as part of a program sponsored
by the U.S. Agency for International Development. The program seeks to promote ISO 14000
and other voluntary standards as well as pollution prevention. Numerous meetings have been
held with companies and standard-setting organizations in Southeast Asian countries, and
many executives have been interviewed regarding their environmental interests and
intentions, and potential responses to ISO 14000.
Several messages are being transmitted very clearly from Southeast Asia. First, the
drivers for improved environmental performance are much less powerful. There is almost no
public demand for environmentally friendly products, enforcement of discharge regulations
is generally very weak, the costs of environmental compliance are consequently low
(especially for small and medium-size enterprises), environmental interest groups are
primarily focused on natural resources and not industrial pollution, and interest groups
have very limited ability to apply legal or market pressure on polluters. Consequently,
most Asian factory managers feel no incentive to improve their companies' environmental
performance. Meeting government discharge standards is about all they care about. To make
matters worse, some countries have no compliance requirements at all, while others have
compliance requirements that cannot be met. For example, the Philippines requires proper
management and disposal of hazardous waste, but no publically-available hazardous waste
treatment or disposal facilities exist.
Second, even if Asian factory managers do become interested in going "beyond
compliance," there are very few resources available to help them do it. Unlike in the
US and Europe, there are very few technical assistance programs in pollution prevention,
most of which are funded by international aid agencies and which are consquently
transient. Education on the subject in universities or professional education is almost
non-existent. Environmental consultants in the region are almost exclusively focused on
pollution control and environmental impact assessment. The few consultants that understand
the management tools for improving environmental performance beyond compliance are
multi-national firms which are relatively expensive. Low demand for environmental
performance leads to low supply of skills, which further discourages demand. If a company
wants to hire a consultant to develop a "beyond compliance" EMS, it will almost
certainly have to shop abroad at much higher prices.
Third, the interest in ISO 14000 is almost totally focused on preventing loss of export
markets or meeting international customer demands. It is the label they want, not the
improved performance itself. In some cases Asian executives have acknowledged that ISO
14001 certification could make their companies more efficient but that is not why they are
doing it.
Without a top-down belief that environmental management systems are really good for a
company's bottom line, implementation of an ISO EMS is very likely to focus on the path of
least resistance, namely, building the EMS around compliance assurance. This is the
least-cost means of getting the label, and since compliance performance even for big
companies is generally spotty, continual improvement of the EMS is likely to focus on
reducing discharge standard violations.
Thus, in Southeast Asia and probably in most developing countries, the attitude towards
ISO 14000 is profoundly different than it is in the developed countries. They want the ISO
label at the least cost and least complication, without any real belief that the system
itself will be good for the company as a whole. When international buyers and
environmental advocates realize that ISO certification in developing countries is
generally not resulting in the same kind of improved "beyond compliance"
performance that is happening in developed countries, the perceived value of the ISO label
may become increasingly suspect.
On a positive note, however, ISO 14000 is clearly getting the attention of top Asian
industry executives, who are trying to determine how to respond. There is great demand for
any presentation on how to develop an EMS that actually reduces operating costs instead of
increasing marketing expenses. Practical pollution prevention and process improvement
skills are being developed in the region, although not at a pace keeping up with new
industrialization. There certainly will be a few Asian companies that develop good ISO
systems that really go beyond compliance. But in the fastest growing economies of the
world, a few will make little difference.
Strategic Approach to ISO 14000
Companies that are concerned about their environmental reputations, costs,
and risks need to take a strategic approach to ISO 14001 certification that reflects both
the uncertainty about its political and social acceptance and the reality that an ISO EMS
only accomplishes what the company decides it wants to accomplish. In particular,
companies need to recognize that stakeholders who are actively concerned about
environmental performance will probably want to know the details of the EMS, including
specific objectives and targets.
Developing an ISO EMS is a complex and costly project for organizations which do not
already have some kind of integrated EMS in place. A great deal of documentation and
systems integration will be needed by such organizations. On the other hand, companies
which have already developed an integrated EMS can used the allowed reference and indexing
in the ISO EMS specification to reduce the paperwork necessary for certification. Of
course, such companies have already spent considerable time and money on their EMS.
Determining just what the EMS is supposed to accomplish takes substantial data
collection, discussion, and negotiation. If the objective of the EMS is to demonstrate
that the company is committed to compliance with applicable regulations, the EMS is not
likely to reduce the company's operating costs (although it may reduce the potential for
non-compliance penalties and other liabilities). However, if the EMS is focused on
eliminating waste and pollution at its source, the EMS becomes an efficiency system that
can reduce operating costs significantly.
The recommended strategy for companies interested in eventual ISO 14001 certification
is based on the quality of the ISO EMS standard, its potential politics, and the real
economics of environmental management. Organizations, especially companies with
international markets, should do the following:
- Obtain management commitment and establish the EMS framework that is outlined in ISO
14001. This framework was developed by many experienced environmental managers in many
countries and provides a sound basis for organizing an EMS.
- Conduct a thorough environmental assessment of the facility or organization for which an
EMS is to be developed. This should include quantification of chemical use and emissions
to all environmental media, life cycle analysis of products and identification of
significant impacts during the product life cycle, and environmental aspects of the
physical site such as property contamination, surrounding environmental resources, and
emissions pathways off the site. Traditional environmental impact assessment guidelines
may be used as a framework. If feasible, include full cost accounting for all waste
streams in the assessment. Most managers seriously underestimate the true cash cost of
generating waste, which includes lost raw materials, wasted processing, waste collection
and handling, treatment equipment, treatment operations, and disposal. Waste stream costs
should be allocated back to the processes which generate the wastes.
- Communicate with all environmental stakeholders, using the data collected in the
environmental assessment, regarding their concerns and expectations about corporate
environmental performance.
- Establish a relative-risk assessment system to prioritize the environmental aspects that
pose the greatest risk to the environment and to sustainable facility operations. Risk
assessment should include the stakeholders' perceptions, which may not reflect the true
risks but are nonetheless important to address. The objective of this system is to
determine where the EMS should focus.
- Using the risk-based information on priority chemicals, emissions or product aspects,
conduct an audit of the production processes or activities that require their use or
generation, to answer the question, "Why is this use/emission/impact happening?"
This is a classic pollution prevention assessment which identifies what can be done to
prevent problems and reduce costs and risks. It is important to note the sequence of these
initial activities. Basic data and risk tolerances must be used to establish priorities
for cause analysis and generation of prevention ideas. Also note that this sequence
complies with the requirements of the European EMAS system to conduct a preliminary
environmental review.
- Establish objectives and targets for the EMS that will result in elimination of waste
and consequent pollution at the source, meaning at the process or production unit level,
which includes direct support functions such as purchasing and product design.
- Begin implementing the prevention-based aspects of the EMS immediately and develop a
plan to implement the full EMS within a time frame of not more than two years.
- Prepare a public report on corporate environmental performance that reflects both real
and perceived environmental concern, includes real operational data, and describes
realistic objectives and targets for achieving meaningful environmental results.
Stakeholders want to see what is actually being done, not a description of a management
system. Environmental activists in particular want to see results, not procedures. This
report may be more important to top management than to anyone else because drafting it
will help illuminate the major strategic issues for the organization. Make sure the report
is as honest and objective as possible. If real problems about performance are identified
by the draft report, implement targeted strategies to fix the problems and describe the
strategies in the final report.
- Carefully observe the ISO 14001 process using all available information sources. In
Europe, environmental activists already are attacking the ISO standard as being weaker
than EMAS. On the other hand, many U.S. organizations feel that the commitment to
continuous improvment required by the ISO EMS standard will help companies achieve
meaningful organizational improvements, beyond technical solutions for specific
environmental problems.
- Using information from environmental stakeholders and from internal sources, make a
cost-benefit decision as to whether ISO certification will be necessary. It may be that a
solid environmental report identifying real progress towards meaningful goals will satisfy
most stakeholders, without the cost and complexity of an ISO-certified EMS. On the other
hand, stakeholder pressure or the need for tight internal controls may make an
ISO-certified system either a marketing or a management imperative.
- Do not attempt certification for at least a year after the ISO EMS standard is
finalized. There is a real possibility that environmental interest groups will disparage
the ISO label, and companies that really want to do better may be lumped together in the
public eye with companies that are gross polluters and that have obtained ISO
certification solely as a public relations device. The way for a concerned company to
distinguish itself is to implement meaningful pollution prevention and pollution
prevention strategies and to report on real facts and results to stakeholders within a
framework that is guided by the ISO EMS standard.
Developing A Corporate Environmental
Management System
There are many opinions about the best way to develop a corporate EMS, but most
agree on the basics of Plan (management commitment, data collection), Do (prevention
activities), Check (internal and external measurement and reporting), and Act (corrective
action). The ISO 14001 structure, like classic quality management systems, is based on
this Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle. Because of the extensive stakeholder interest in
environmental performance, the cycle needs to include politics as well as performance.
Current Corporate Responses to ISO 14000
The wait-and-see strategy outlined above is apparently being adopted by
a large number of US companies. Several recent surveys of corporate response to ISO 14000
have come to similar conclusions. In late 1995, the ISO 14000 West Coast Working Group
(WCWG), an informal group of about 60 multi-national companies, consulting firms,
regulatory agencies and economic development organizations, conducted a survey of member
companies and others that are tracking ISO 14000. Ninety-nine firms responded to the
survey, of which about eighty of the respondents were industrial and sixty-eight percent
had more than 1000 US employees. Seventy-four percent said someone in their company was a
member of the US Technical Advisory Group to ISO 14000. Sixty-five percent said that they
had not formed a formal organization to address ISO 14000. The range of perceived benefits
and existing approaches to ISO varied widely. 1
When asked, "What best describes your current position/strategy for ISO
14000?" the survey respondents answered as follows:
Prepare programs/wait to see if certification is necessary 58%
Do nothing, wait and see 21%
Prepare programs but not certification 16%
Seek certicification 07%
Other 04%
Another survey was conducted in 1996 by Concurrent Technologies Corporation. It polled
200 ISO 9000 certified firms, of which ninety-three responded. Fifty-eight percent had no
plans to – pursue ISO 14001 certification.
However, fifty-eight percent said they already had some kind of EMS in place. The survey
concluded that respondents are not sure of the standard's costs and benefits and are
concerned about the commitment of money and other resources. The cost of achieving ISO
9000 registration appeared to be a major reason for reluctance to pursue ISO 14000
certification.2
Clearly, a cautionary approach to ISO 14001 is being followed by many companies
which nonetheless have a strong interest in environmental performance. This
"real-world" interpretation should be strongly considered when evaluating the
claims for the importance of ISO 14001 that are currently being made by consultants and
others offering implementation and certification services.
Pollution Prevention Strategies Within an
ISO 14001 Framework
Although ISO 14001 includes pollution control and treatment
within its definition of "pollution prevention," environmental management
experts commonly agree that pollution prevention means reducing the generation of
pollution at the production unit source, through means such as more efficient equipment,
housekeeping, maintenance, training, process control, and eliminating the use of toxic
input materials. When organizations regard pollution as wasted resources and defective
production, they can realize production cost savings and improved efficiency by
eliminating the waste.
There are many different ways to achieve pollution prevention in an
organization. The ISO 14001 EMS standard includes a number of elements where pollution
prevention strategies are appropriate and can add value.
Environmental Policy Considerations (Section
4.1)
ISO 14001 requires a written environmental policy that
includes a commitment to pollution prevention. ISO defines pollution prevention as
"Use of practices, materials or products that avoid, reduce or control pollution,
which may include recycling, treatment, process changes, control mechanisms, efficient use
of resources and materials substitution."
Most managers realize that controlling and treating pollution is an
expense, not an investment. If an organization wants to realize significant cost savings
from an EMS, its environmental policy needs to clearly state that the top priority of the
EMS is to prevent the generation of waste and pollution in the first place, thereby
eliminating the costs of pollution control and treatment and also improving production
efficiency. The objectives and targets to achieve this goal are described in the planning
section of the EMS.
It should be clearly understood that the EMS policy required by ISO
14001 is not just a statement of values. It is the statement of management structure,
control and means that guides the entire EMS. Certification of the EMS will require solid
evidence that all the policy statements are being operationalized and realized. The
self-test for top executives will be to read their own policy statement and tell each
other, "Prove it."
Environmental Aspects (Section 4.2.1)
ISO 14001 defines environmental aspects as
"elements of an organization's activities, products or services which can interact
with the environment." ISO requires that organizations have a procedure to identify
its environmental aspects that can have a significant impact on the environment, and
consider these impacts in setting objectives and targets for the EMS.
For pollution prevention to be successful, it is very important that
the identification of environmental aspects include definition of the source of the
concern. For example, "waste water containing toxic chemicals" may be a
significant environmental aspect of operations. But this alone does not help the EMS focus
on the source of the problem. For a true pollution prevention focus, the aspect should be
defined as "waste water from Production Unit(s) XXX" or similar process-oriented
definition. Establishing which production units are truly responsible for the existence of
a significant environmental aspect of operations is the first step in an EMS that is
designed to prevent pollution.
Environmental aspects should include the product life-cycle, use of
chemicals and energy, emissions to the environment, and pathways and fates of pollutants.
As the U.S. and European environmental record reveals, once-"insignificant"
activities such as product disposal by customers have created major environmental aspects
for corporations.
Objectives and Targets (Section 4.2.3)
ISO requires that organizations shall establish
environmental objectives and targets at each relevant function and level within the
organization. For pollution prevention, the relevant function and level is the production
unit. General objectives and targets should be broken down into production unit targets
for those units which are responsible for creating significant environmental concerns. For
example, a factory objective and target may be "to reduce the use of water by 20% in
two years." At the production unit level, the objective and target may be
"reduce the use of water at production unit #4 by 30% in 1 year." The
combination of production unit targets enables the factory to meet its overall targets. By
focusing on the production unit targets, the EMS treats pollution as a production issue
and does not become overly focused on pollution control and treatment.
Structure and Responsibility (Section 4.3.1)
When the EMS is focused on pollution control and
treatment, the responsibility for implementing it falls solely on the environmental
department. When the EMS is designed to treat pollution as a production inefficiency
problem then it becomes the responsibility of everyone in the organization. Environmental
and pollution prevention responsibilities should be part of everyone's job descriptions,
and most importantly, included in job performance evaluations. People do what they get
measured on. If meeting the pollution prevention objectives and targets is a factor in
individual performance measurement, then people will work to meet the targets. It is very
important for top management to understand that pollution control engineers are not
responsible for the generation of waste. This is the responsibility of production staff
and engineers and they need to be evaluated on their performance in this area.
Training (Section 4.3.2)
Training is fundamentally important to the success of an
EMS focused on pollution prevention. Production employees and all who support them,
including purchasing, engineering, maintenance, shipping and others, need to understand
the many tools they have available to prevent waste from being generated. Table 2 outlines
required and recommended topics for training.
ISO requires that training include the potential environmental impacts
of work activities, roles and responsibilities, and the benefits of improvement. To
stimulate pollution prevention, training should also include measurement and allocation of
the true costs of waste. Waste costs much more than is usually recognized. Costs include
lost raw materials, replacement materials, excess capacity needed to accommodate
inefficiency, waste collection and handling, land for treatment equipment, equipment,
treatment chemicals, energy and much more. By training all employees to be aware of the
actual costs of the waste they generate and training them to control those costs, the EMS
becomes a significant tool for productivity improvement.
Most important of all, train the boss first! Management commitment is
crucial to the success of the EMS and to obtaining ISO certification, and commitment only
comes with knowledge. Training should start with the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and
move down the ranks so that management policies are clearly understood and operationalized
by staff. Some key training issues for CEOs include understanding the true full cost of
waste and pollution, environmental risks, strategies for environmental sustainability, and
opportunities for organizational networking and collaboration.
Operational Control (Section 4.3.6)
ISO 14001 requires that the EMS include specific
environmental criteria in the operations and activities which have significant
environmental aspects. This is a relatively generic requirement, but there are three
specific areas where an EMS can play a major role in significantly reducing waste.
Cost Management
As described earlier, pollution and waste costs most organizations
much more than they realize. Identifying the true total cost of waste is fundamental for
long-term success in pollution prevention. After all, it is not possible to know how much
you can save by waste reduction if you don't know how much you are spending on waste now.
Once true costs are known they should be allocated back to the production units that are
responsible for generating them. If the cost of waste is considered overhead, then the
units that produce the least waste carry an extra and unfair burden, and the units that
generate the most waste get off without paying their fair share for waste management. This
tends to subsidize the most wasteful processes and penalize the cleanest ones. When
supervisors are charged directly for their unit's waste, they begin minimizing the costs
by reducing the waste generated.
This principle applies to project financial analysis and budgeting as
well. Too often, projects that would actually save the organization money by reducing
waste are rejected because not enough true costs were included in the comparison of
current vs. alternative costs. Total cost assessment of pollution prevention and product
design projects should include all direct, indirect and potential costs, a five- to
ten-year time horizon, and the use of cash flow discount rates that reflect the relative
risks of alternatives. The EMS should therefore include accounting and financial functions
as well as production and waste management functions.
Suppliers (Section 4.3.6.c)
ISO requires that the EMS have procedures to manage goods and
services and suppliers and contractors used by the organization. Managing suppliers is a
key element in pollution prevention. The basic premise of pollution prevention is, if you
don't buy it, it can't become waste. Organizations can work with their suppliers to change
toxic materials, reduce incoming packaging, and return packaging to suppliers. Suppliers
can also be directed to supply the organization with more environmentally friendly
materials, and to show to the buyer that the supplier has their own EMS focused on
pollution prevention. This strategy leads to cost savings for the organization and
improved reliability of suppliers who are reducing their own environmental costs and
risks.
Monitoring and Measurement (Section 4.4.1)
ISO requires that organizations shall measure and monitor on a
regular basis the key characteristics of operations that can have significant
environmental impacts. In most companies, this takes the form of measuring pollution
discharges to ensure that they are within limits set by the government. But this approach
does not help the companies to prevent the pollution from being generated. To promote
pollution prevention, wastes should be monitored and measured at the process level so the
operators can see exactly what is being wasted and the EMS can focus on the production
units that are generating the wastes with the highest costs and the greatest potential
impacts. The measurements can be used to allocate waste costs back to the production units
in support of the EMS cost management elements.
Auditing (Section 4.4.4)
ISO requires that organizations have a procedure to
audit their EMS. This is a systems audit only. In order to identify opportunities for
pollution prevention, the EMS should also include regular process pollution prevention
audits. These audits examine the production processes to determine how much and what kind
of waste is being generated, how much the waste is costing the organization, and what
happens to the waste. The information gathered is used to update the EMS and set new
objectives and targets as necessary. ISO requires continual improvement of the EMS. If
organizations want continual improvement to mean saving more money, then the pollution
prevention audits are the tools that will identify cost - saving opportunities on an
on-going basis.
Getting the Most Out Of ISO
It is up to each organization to determine what exactly it expects its ISO
EMS to do for it. Some organizations will only be interested in the "seal of
approval" for its EMS so it can satisfy stakeholders that the organization is
effectively managing its environmental affairs. Other organizations will want to make sure
that the significant investment in an ISO-compliant EMS has a good payback. These
organizations will want to ensure that the EMS is designed as a production efficiency and
pollution prevention system that reduces environmental costs and risks. Within the ISO
14001 framework there are a number of opportunities to implement pollution prevention
strategies that can achieve these goals. But top management has to make the decision to do
it.
ISO 14001 certification may become a necessity for some businesses in some markets. It
is not likely to be necessary for the majority of businesses. Certification may also prove
to be a politically sensitive issue; if companies in countries with few or no
environmental protection laws become certified, or if a certified company has a major
environmental disaster which is used by radical environmental groups to discredit the ISO
standard. As the generic nature of ISO 14001 becomes more widely recognized, stakeholders
with a serious concern about an organization's environmental performance are likely to ask
for the intimate details of the EMS, especially the specific objectives and targets that
have been set by the organization, and the progress that has been made to meet the
targets. If the objectives and targets are found to be wanting, the fact that the EMS is
certified will not be very convincing to stakeholders who want the environment to be
protected.
Companies can get the best out of ISO 14001 by implementing an EMS that follows the ISO
structure, and which is focused on real pollution prevention, environmentally friendly
product design, use of environmentally responsible suppliers, and solid documentation of
results being obtained. By providing a corporate environmental report that describes the
EMS and provides data on accomplishments, stakeholders can be satisfied that the
organization is in fact protecting the environment to the extent feasible, and top
management can be sure that their EMS system is a tool for long term productivity
improvement and increased market share.
Acknowledgments
Valuable comments on this paper were provided by David Burdick, P.E., Tom Eggert,
Dr. David Hovarongkura, Vithal V. Deshpande, and Richard Stevenson.
ISO 14000 Information On the Internet
The following World Wide Web sites have information about the ISO 14000
standards, including descriptions, commentary, registrars and consultants:
Required and Recommended Topics for
Employee EMS Training
The System: Manage It (Section 4.3.2)
ISO EMS RequirementsNeed for Conformance with the EMS
Environmental Impacts and Benefits of Improved Performance
Roles and Responsibilities
Consequences of Non-Compliance with the EMS
Management Tools: Understand It
Team Building
Descriptive Process Analysis
Activity-Based Costing
Total Cost Assessment
Risk Assessment
Total Quality Management
Source Reduction: Don't Buy It
End Product Re-Design
Hazardous Chemical Substitution
Hazardous Chemical Modification
Purchasing and Inventory Control
Best Management Practices and Good Housekeeping
Water and Energy Conservation
Pollution prevention: Don't Waste It
Benchmarking
Employee Training
Maintenance
Process Control
Process Modification
Equipment Modification
Recycling: Don't Throw It Away
Closed-Loop Recycling
Waste Segregation
Re-Use Wastes
Reclaim Wastes
Conversion: Turn Wastes Into Resources
Convert Wastes to New Products
Find Outside Uses for Wastes
Endnotes:
1) Memorandum from Corky Chew, Apple Computer Inc. To WCWG participants, December
11, 1995.
2) International Environmental Management Systems Update, June 1996, page 19,
published by CEEM International.
