Environmental Management System and Its Benefits
Requirements of ISO 14001 Certification
ISO 14001:2015 is an Environment Management system standard that provides guidelines and requirements to minimize and control the pollution generated in the organization due to its products/processes or services. EMS enables the organization to utilize and reduce the natural resources i.e. Water, Air, Land, and Energy consumption to obtain environmental sustainability, prevention of pollution, environment conservation, and continuous environmental performance delivery through effective monitoring of the effectiveness of EMS.
The key objective of EMS is to enhance environmental performance, Fulfillment of compliance obligations, achieve the organizational EMS objectives, reduce pollution at the workplace, etc.
ISO 14001 emphasizes on process approach that enables an organization to plan its processes and their interactions Considering the PDCA model.
- Plan – establish environmental objectives and processes necessary to deliver results in accordance with the organization’s environmental policy.
- DO – implement the processes as planned.
- Check – Monitor & Measure processes against the organization’s EMS policy, including its commitments, objectives, operation criteria, and results.
- Act – take action for continual improvements.
The primary requirements are to identify Environmental Aspects and their Impact on the environment and the organization’s control over it, identify the operational control to reduce the impact, implement admin, and engineering control to minimize the impact, comply with the applicable legal requirements, and to its conditions The success of an environmental management system depends on commitment from all levels and functions of the organization, led by top management.
ISO certification can be obtained after there is the effective implementation of the EMS in any organization, the implementation can be done by the organization by its trained employee or by any independent consultants, the organization needs to integrate the ISO 14001 requirements into the organization business processes to get the optimum benefits of the ISO 14001 Certification.
Documents required for ISO 14001 Certification.
Basic documents required for ISO 14001 Certification.
- EMS Manual
- Procedures
- Environmental Policy
- Internal/external issues
- Needs and expectations of interested parties
- Risk assessment
- Aspect impact analysis
- Legal Register and Record of Compliance
- Reports of Mock Drill
- Environmental Monitoring records
- Operational control records
- Record Non conforming outputs
- Corrective Preventive action record
- Internal Audit Record
- Management Review Record
- Continual improvement records
Benefits of ISO 14001 Certification
- controlled pollution level
- improved environment performance
- Eco-friendly product/process approach
- Legal requirements comply
- Reduced waste management
- Safe Workplace
- Fewer wastages
- Satisfied interested parties
- Eco-friendly work environment