ISO 14001 Environmental Management
ISO 14001 Environmental Management Systems (EMS)
ISO 14001 improves environmental performance
Put environmental management at the heart of your operations to achieve sustainable success. This international standard helps you reduce your environmental impact as well as grow your business.
Read on to discover the benefits of, and requirements needed, for ISO 14001 implementation and certification.
What is ISO 14001 and environmental management?
ISO 14001 is an internationally accepted standard that outlines how to put an effective environmental management system in place in your organization. It is designed to help businesses remain commercially successful without overlooking environmental responsibilities and impacts. It can also help you to grow sustainably while reducing the environmental impact of this growth.
ISO 14001 belongs to the ISO 14000 family of environmental management standards (including ISO 14004), and provides the framework to allow you to meet increasingly high customer expectations of corporate responsibility, as well as legal or regulatory requirements. Are you looking to embed an environmental management plan within your organization? ISO 14001 is for you!
What are the benefits of ISO 14001?
Certification to ISO 14001 allows you to:
- Better environmental management reduces waste and energy use
- Improve efficiency to cut the cost of running your business
- Demonstrate compliance to expand your business opportunities
- Meet legal obligations to win greater stakeholder and customer trust
- Prepare for the changing business landscape confidently
- Increase your access to new customers and business partners
- Enhance your reputation
Are you ready for environmental management?
Whether you’re new to ISO 14001 or looking to take your expertise further, we have the right training courses, resources and services. We offer packages that can be customized to your business to jumpstart your environmental management – cutting the cost of services you don’t need. An ISO 14001 package can be designed to remove the complexity of getting you where you want to be – whatever your starting point.
Getting started with ISO 14001 Environmental Management
Find the best way to get started with ISO 14001 and discover how environmental management is the right choice for your business now and in the future.
What is ISO 14001 Environmental Management?
Environmental Management Systems (ISO 14001) is an internationally accepted standard that sets out how you can go about putting in place an effective EMS. The standard is designed to address the delicate balance between maintaining profitability and reducing environmental impact. With the commitment of your entire organization, it can enable you to achieve both objectives.
What’s in ISO 14001:
- General requirements
- Environmental policy
- Planning implementation and operation
- Checking and corrective action
- Management review
This means you can identify aspects of your business that impact on the environment and understand those environmental laws that are relevant to your situation. The next step is to produce objectives for improvement and a management programme to achieve them, with regular reviews for continual improvement. We can then periodically assess the system and, if compliant, register your company or site to ISO 14001.
What are the benefits of ISO 14001 Environmental Management?
Certifying your company’s environmental management system to ISO 14001 means that a third party, such as AVN, has assessed that it meets the requirements set out in the standard.
Certification to ISO 14001 allows you to:
- Demonstrate a commitment to achieving legal and regulatory compliance to regulators and government
- Demonstrate your environmental commitment to stakeholders
- Demonstrate an innovative and forward thinking approach to clients and prospective employees
- Increase your access to new customers and business partners
- Better manage your environmental risks, now and in the future
- Potentially reduce public liability insurance costs
- Enhance your reputation
For particular industries, pressure is now being exerted by many large organizations, such as original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) who expect their suppliers to adopt environmentally-friendly practices and may mandate ISO 14001 certification as a licence to operate.
If you want to take the implementation and certification of an EMS slowly, the BS 8555 STEMS scheme allows you to phase the management system in and assess how you’re performing at each step on the path. Once completed, it still results in achieving ISO 14001 certification.
Implementing ISO 14001 Environmental Management
Plan for your future by applying ISO 14001 to your business. Work with us to build an environmental management system that could wipe out waste and multiply new business opportunities.
Are you ready for implementation?
Effective environmental management becomes easier with buy-in from your whole business. And we understand that each organisation – large or small – is at a different stage with their environmental plans. That’s why we offer service packages that are as unique as you. An ISO 14001 package can include specific services that your business needs to achieve world-class environmental management – cutting the cost of services you don’t need and overcoming particular challenges.
We’ll help you shape an ISO 14001 Project Plan, working with the systems you already have in place. And we’ll help you guide your whole business through the implementation process.
Who is relevant to ISO 14001?
Environmental impact is becoming an increasingly important issue across the globe, with pressure to minimize that impact coming from a number of sources, including: local and national governments, regulators, trade associations, customers, employees and shareholders.
Social pressures are also building up from the growing array of interested parties, such as consumer, environmental and minority non-governmental organizations (NGOs), academia and neighbours.
ISO 14001 is relevant to every organization, including:
- Single site to large multi-national companies
- High risk companies to low risk service organizations
- Manufacturing, process and the service industries; including local governments
- All industry sectors including public and private sectors
- Original equipment manufacturers and their suppliers
Top tips for implementing ISO 14001
- Get commitment and support from senior management.
- Engage the whole business with good internal communication.
- Compare your existing quality systems with ISO 14001 requirements.
- Get customer and supplier feedback on current environmental management.
- Establish an implementation team to get the best results.
- Map out and share roles, responsibilities and timescales.
- Adapt the basic principles of environmental management to your business.
- Motivate staff involvement with training and incentives.
- Share ISO 14001 knowledge and encourage staff to train as internal auditors.
- Regularly review your ISO 14001 system to make sure you are continually improving it.
ISO 14001 for small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs)
ISO 14001 Environmental Management provides equal benefits for businesses of all sizes. Introduce the world-class management system to your business and you’ll reduce your environmental impact – giving you greater commercial opportunities now and in the future.
Certification to ISO 14001 Environmental Management
How to get certified to ISO 14001
We make the certification process simple. After we have received your application we appoint a client manager who will guide you and your business through the following steps.
- Gap analysis –
This is an optional pre-assessment service where we take a closer look at your existing environmental management system and compare it with ISO 14001 requirements. This helps identify areas that need more work before we carry out a formal assessment, saving you time and money.
- Formal assessment –
This happens in two stages. First we review your organization’s preparedness for assessment by checking if the necessary ISO 14001 procedures and controls have been developed.We will share the details of our findings with you via our Assurance Portal, so that if we find gaps, you can close them.Next, if all the requirements are in place, we’ll assess the implementation of the procedures and controls within your organization to make sure that they are working effectively as required for certification of ISO 14001.
- Certification and beyond –
When you have passed the formal assessment you will receive an ISO 14001 certificate, which is valid for three years. Your client manager will stay in touch during this time, paying you regular visits to make sure your system doesn’t just remain compliant, but that it continually improves and adds value to your organization.You’ll be able to access all the information related to your certification via our AVN Assurance Portal. Available 24/7, you can view essential information, such as your next 12 months of visit dates, audit reports, and certificates to support you with managing your AVN assessments and promoting your success.