Improve your environmental compliance performance and begin your journey to Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) maturity.
More and more, business and EHS leaders like you are seeing the benefit of certifying to ISO 14001, the international standard for environmental management systems. Even if you’re not interested in certifying right now, you can still benefit from using ISO 14001 as a resource to improve your environmental management programs.
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) first published ISO 14001 in 1996, in response to global concerns about protecting the environment and demand for better guidelines to help businesses improve their environmental management practices. ISO revised the standard in 2004 and most recently in 2015. ISO 14001:2015 goes beyond the scope of previous editions by focusing more on external factors that influence environmental performance, including product life cycle considerations, and on commitment to environmental objectives across all levels of the organization. Because of this expanded perspective on environmental management, ISO 14001:2015 provides the ideal framework for improving environmental compliance and basic management performance today, while also setting the stage for building ESG maturity.
Important Aspects of an Environmental Management System Covered by ISO 14001
ISO 14001 lays out the key aspects that all successful safety management systems should have. Some of the most important ones are listed below.
Stakeholders
Risks & Opportunities
Environmental Compliance
Communications
Emergency Response
Data & Reporting
Stakeholders
Section 4 of ISO 14001 establishes that companies need to have a wide enough perspective to recognize and account for all the internal and external aspects that affect their environmental performance. That analysis, according to Section 4.2, needs to include the “interested parties” (i.e., stakeholders) relevant to the company’s environmental performance. Companies who pattern their environmental management system on ISO 14001 will get the stakeholder input they need to understand their strengths and challenges. Stakeholder engagement is also a key ingredient for building and maintaining ESG maturity.
Risks and Opportunities
Once you have a solid handle on the internal and external factors affecting your environmental management system and have good engagement with stakeholders, you’ll be better positioned to understand the risks to your company’s environmental performance, as well as opportunities to improve performance. Section 6.1.1 also reminds us that the purpose of identifying risks is to control risks, or as the standard puts it, to “prevent or reduce undesired effects, including the potential for external environmental conditions to affect the organization.”
Environmental Compliance
Compliance (or non-compliance) with established environmental regulations has a huge potential impact on a company’s environmental performance. The drafters of ISO 14001 recognize this, and state in Section 6.1.3 that organizations need to understand which regulatory obligations are applicable, and take those obligations into account when “establishing, implementing, maintaining and continually improving its environmental management system.” Companies need to not only know their regulatory requirements, but also be able to show they know them, and to understand how the requirements affect their environmental management strategies.
Communications
The developers of ISO 14001 understand that the best-conceived and best-written plans won’t work unless all the right people know about them and understand and accept their roles in executing the plans. Section 7.4 states that companies need to determine the “what,” “when,” “where,” “who” and “how” aspects of communication and ensure that they’re including both internal and external stakeholders.
Emergency Preparedness and Response
ISO 14001 rightfully identifies that organizations need to have active, thorough emergency preparedness and response plans alongside their plans for “regular” operations. Section 8.2 states that organizations need to plan “actions to prevent or mitigate adverse environmental impacts from emergency situations,” periodically test their planned response actions, and revise plans when necessary. Good emergency planning is one of the prerequisites for building resilience—a term for a company’s ability to adapt to a changing environment, overcome challenges, and maintain business continuity.
Data and Reporting
Companies need good data to enable better decision making, which is why Section 9 of ISO 14001 connects data management to performance evaluation. Your organization needs to determine the most relevant data to measure, how to measure it, and a frequency for reviewing the data (in some cases, alongside key internal and external stakeholders) to evaluate environmental performance. In some cases, you may also need to collect data to report to regulatory agencies and use the data to ensure your compliance with applicable regulations.
The VelocityEHS Environmental Compliance Solution Supports ISO 14001
Air Emissions
Get emissions monitoring, calculation & reporting capabilities that scale to handle every application, from simple pollution tracking to Title V permit compliance.
Waste Management
Simplify enterprise-wide waste management with efficient waste storage time tracking, manifesting and reporting to ensure compliance with key waste management regulations.
Water Quality
Simplify compliance with NPDES and other international, federal, state and municipal water quality & management standards with comprehensive monitoring, analysis and reporting.
Air Emissions
Get emissions monitoring, calculation & reporting capabilities that scale to handle every application, from simple pollution tracking to Title V permit compliance.
Waste Management
Simplify enterprise-wide waste management with efficient waste storage time tracking, manifesting and reporting to ensure compliance with key waste management regulations.
Water Quality
Simplify compliance with NPDES and other international, federal, state and municipal water quality & management standards with comprehensive monitoring, analysis and reporting.
Ready to Start Your ISO 14001 Journey?
If you feel like you’re always struggling to reduce the length of your environmental management to-do list, following ISO 14001 may help you pivot to a more proactive approach in which responsibility for key tasks is shared, and you’re getting the insights you need from external and internal stakeholders. The standard also provides a great framework for moving beyond regulatory compliance and building ESG maturity.
However, you’ll have a hard time shifting toward more efficient processes based on ISO 14001 while still using inefficient tools, like hard copies or desktop software applications. Implementing a purpose-built EHS and ESG software platform, like VelocityEHS Accelerate®, provides the support you need to break out of reactive management cycles and pivot your approach to ActiveEHS®, a continuous improvement cycle of prediction, intervention and outcomes that’s integrated right into our platform.
The VelocityEHS Environmental Compliance solution helps you manage core tasks as outlined by ISO 14001, including:
- Simplified collection of air emissions and water discharge data, including integration with Continuous Emissions Monitoring System (CEMS) equipment
- Fully customizable and exportable reporting, to provide transparency across your company and supply chain
- Track compliance with auto alerts when you’re approaching or exceeding permit limitations for air, water, and waste
- Have centralized access to your most important environmental data, like waste profiles and manifests, and emissions and water discharge data, so you can demonstrate compliance
- Reduce the time and difficulties in performing complex calculations, such as potential to emit (PTE) and loading rate, to streamline compliance obligations with environmental permits such as EPA Major Source/Title V permits for air emissions or National Pollutant Discharge Elimination Systems (NPDES) permits for water discharges
- Simplified completion of regulatory reports, such as annual emissions statements, discharge monitoring reports (DMRs), biennial hazardous waste reports (HWRs), and automatic population of fields in the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) report, with direct export to reporting systems such as EPA’s Central Data Exchange (CDX)
Whether you’re a growing enterprise or a recognized global leader, the VelocityEHS Accelerate® Platform simplifies environmental management and ESG alignment through the tracking, managing and reporting of your air emissions, water quality and waste compliance data.
Learn how VelocityEHS can help your organization certify to ISO 14001
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