One of the great things that we see happening in the compliance world at the moment is an upsurge in the interest in gaining accreditation to ISO14001 for environmental management systems (EMS). There a lot of factors generating this interest from contractual requirements including the need for environmental sustainability or certification to business just wanting to do better in this area, either way it's a great thing.
Yet there is still some misunderstanding out there about what 14001 is and what it needs you to be doing and of course the real business benefits from it. People still view it as purely a 'green thing' rather than a business imperative or even a business benefit when there are huge benefits to be gained from having great environmental practices.
Like any management system, ISO14001 is not going to make you the perfect just because you are certified, it's not going to ensure you meet every legal requirement from an environmental standpoint and it's not going to make everyone in the business environmentally conscious, it would be great if it did, but it won't. (Beware of those who tell you different). It will however raise everyone's awareness and hopefully make people think about individual and organisational impacts through an environmental lens.
ISO14001 for environmental management systems, by the very nature of being an international standard can't be specific to your organisation or even your country, it's purely designed to provide a framework for you to follow to build and flesh out your specific systems about how you will manage your organisations environmental impacts.
It's stated purpose is "to provide a framework to protect the environment and respond to the changing environmental conditions in balance with socio-economic needs." Keep in mind that those needs may be very different in one country or organisation than another.
What the ISO14001 standard is going to help you do as you implement it is work through the framework and develop your systems to help you identify and manage the various aspects of your organisation and impacts on the environment. It will give you the awareness about the potential adverse environmental affects you may be having as a result of what you do and what you make. That means you need to learn and control the things within your organisation that will have both a negative and a positive environmental impact. That is it's real strength, how can you possibly improve anything if you don't first understand it, as you work through your implementation you will really learn to understand how your organisation impacts the environment.
The impacts you need to consider are not just about how you make your product or how you deliver the service you supply. By looking at the environmental aspect of your organisation and its products and understanding the impact of the them, for example how long does your product last, what environmental impact does your it have, when people are finished with it does it go to landfill, is it biodegradable, what about the packaging and so forth you can start to understand the total environmental impact you have and where you can make improvements. Think about it as a whole of life exercise, you are going to look to understand and manage your organisations environmental footprint.
How do you do that? Well, you need to understand what the impacts are, measure them, control them, and ideally reduce or eliminate the negative impacts. Simple right?
Like all ISO standards the 14001 environmental manage system standard doe get a review, typically every 5 – 7 years. The current version is ISO14001 2015, which means it's prime for a review. In fact, now the ISO standards committee are looking at it and deciding should it be updated. We do get asked, does that mean you should hold off working towards the standard? No, it's unlikely that anything is going to change until at least 2023, and when it does you will have ample time to bring your current system in line with the new standard. Our advice is get started and start improving.
There are clearly costs that are going to come along with your ISO14001 system. There is the cost of implementing the system as a business, including training of your teams, support from experts or investments needed for meeting requirements you uncover and of course the certification audit.
But let's look at the flip side of this, there are so many benefits from having an environmental management system like 14001. For a start as you improve your environmental performance typically you find savings in resource usage, in one company we worked in the water usage was reduced by 60%, the electricity usage was reduced by 27% and the landfill costs were reduced by 19% all because we found out what we were really doing in our business. Other companies find additional savings in things like packaging where they figure out ways to reduce the level or type of packaging being used which not only saves on packaging costs but also on shipping costs.
As an organisation your public image gets a lift, you are seen as an organisation that cares about what they do and about the impact they have on the planet. That rolls on to helping you recruit people for example. Surveys increasingly show that employee engagement and attraction of new talent, especially younger talent is easier for companies who have a real social and environmental conscience. In a UK survey a few years ago, 76% of millennials said a company's environmental and social commitments played a deciding factor on where they would work. Keep in mind how large a percentage of the workforce our millennials are, can you afford to turn 76% of them away?
You will be able to access new markets or quote on new business which you may not be able to previously, for example in NZ, Government contracts increasingly look for sound environmental management systems in companies just to allow them to bid for work.
Clearly there is also the pure compliance requirements under legal obligations that falling foul to result in some substantial fines.
Done right, ISO14001 for environmental Management Systems will reduce your environmental footprint, it'll help you be a better performing and more environmentally and socially engaged organisation. It'll help you reduce costs of environmental compliance and in many cases the cost of producing your products. It'll make you more appealing to investors, customers and employees while opening doors to new opportunities for your organisation.
Doesn't sound like a bad thing really….
© Many Caps Consulting | All Rights Reserved
When you subscribe to the blog, we will send you an e-mail when there are new updates on the site so you wouldn't miss them.
By accepting you will be accessing a service provided by a third-party external to https://www.manycaps.com/
Comments