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ISO 14000 Standards |
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ISO 14000 Standards |
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ISO, The international Organization for Standardization, is a sister organization to the WTO (World Trade Organization). ISO writes standards to facilitate international trade. Most of those standards are physical and chemical standards. An example is the standard for credit cards. Because of the ISO standards, your credit card can be used all over the world.
In the late 1980's ISO was asked to review the potential to write a standard for environmental management. They took up the challenge, and during the 1990's there was a tremendous effort involving thousands of people in over 60 countries to develop consensus standards on how organizations could manage their environmental issues. That effort continues today, with standards being written and reviewed. All ISO standards are reviewed at least every 5 years to make sure that they are still up to date.
ISO 14000 is actually an entire series of standards. ISO 14001 is the environmental management system standard. This is the standard that is used to certify organizations-following the ISO 14001 allows one to become registered as an ISO 14001 organization. Organizations can also self-declare, that is, they can claim based on their own efforts that they are conforming to the requirements of ISO 14001. The self declaration mechanism was put in place to allow small businesses to take advantage of the standard without invoking the expense of audit and registration.
There have been some criticisms of ISO 14001. Notably, there is concern that an organization can be certified to ISO 14001 without being in compliance with applicable laws. Another flaw is that there is no assurance to the public that the company is in any way superior in its environmental performance than non-ISO 14000 organizations. Finally, ISO 14001 has many requirements for documentation-and these can be onerous, especially for a small organization.
ISO14001 has a companion standard, the ISO 14004 standard, which provides more guidance on how to construct an environmental management system.
The ISO 14010 series of standards are about auditing: the requirements to be an auditor or a registrar, and the requirements for auditor training are laid out there.
The ISO 14020 series of standards relate to ecolabels. There are three types of ecolabels recognized: Type I, which is a multi-attribute label developed by a third party; Type II, which is a single attribute label developed by a producer, and Type III, which is an ecolabel based on life cycle assessment.
ISO 14030 is a standard on environmental performance evaluation. This standard gives guidance on how organizations can evaluate their environmental performance based on operational measures, environmental state and the performance of the management system.
The ISO 14040 series standards are on environmental life cycle assessment. The standards lay out the steps of a life cycle assessment (LCA): scoping, inventory, impact assessment, and interpretation. The 14040 series of standards are the only part of the ISO 14000 series that rely on competent engineering and environmental science. They are therefore the only "technical" part of the standards.
The ISO 14000 series can be most effective if used together. We view the LCA standards as being central to the standards, because they provide a science-based yardstick by which we can measure environmental performance. As such they can be used to analyze environmental aspects and impacts of products, activities and processes, and can drive the environmental management system. Since "what gets measured gets done," performing an LCA will assure that our best understanding of environmental issues is driving what gets done.
A useful byproduct of an LCA is the potential for developing ecolabels. These provide the market forces to improve environmental performance, thus tightly linking economic and environmental performance.