ISO 14001
ISO14001: What is it and why is it important?
The international environmental management standard ISO 14001 contains a specific requirement for the company to assess the ‘significance’ of ‘environmental aspects’. This means you must:
Establish and maintain procedure(s) to identify the environmental aspects of your activities, products and services that you can control and over which you can be expected to have an influence, in order to determine those that have or can have significant impacts on the environment.
The assessment of significance determines the most important environmental aspects. It enables the business to understand its key environmental impacts and to concentrate resources and effort on managing the aspects (activities, products or services) leading to them.
Establishing significance requires the use of criteria that are applied in a justifiable, consistent and transparent way and, generally, an environmental aspect should be considered to be ‘significant’ if it:
* is controlled by regulatory requirements
* is of concern to key stakeholders (or its associated impact is of concern)
* has the potential to cause a demonstrable impact on the environment
* has major financial implications - either positive (savings or market opportunities) or negative (costs).
It is recommended that any aspect affected by applicable legislation should be ‘significant’. It is in the interest of the business that management controls to ensure that the law is complied with, in order to avoid legal (including civil) action. In addition, commitment to regulatory compliance is one of the ISO 14001 standard’s main requirements.
The assessment of significance requires the organisation to have a thorough knowledge of environmental legislation affecting its operations and sufficient understanding of who the key stakeholders are and their environmental concerns.
Whatever process is used, it is clearly recorded and easy to find. The reasons for decisions reached should be clear and consistent so that:
* others can understand why an aspect is considered to be significant
* the process can be reviewed to ensure its suitability and effectiveness in the context of internal performance and external developments
* accredited certifiers and key stakeholders can understand the process.
M&E Sustainability offers guidance on techniques for assessing significance including scoring systems and risk assessment templates. Please ask Paul Reeve for more detailed advice.