ISO 14001: A guide for multinational businesses

ISO 14001 provides companies with a framework to design and implement an environmental management system (EMS). It empowers businesses to proactively reduce their environmental footprint while complying with legal requirements, as well as develop a strong foundation for reporting.

But what makes ISO 14001 so effective and important for many organizations? And what do companies need to do to become ISO 14001 certified?

In this introductory guide, you can find out what ISO 14001 is, why it’s important, how to get certified, and how Enhesa’s regulatory intelligence solutions can help in achieving ISO compliance.

What is ISO 14001?

ISO 14001 is a voluntary standard that organizations can certify to, to demonstrate commitment to responsibly manage the company’s environmental impact. It lays out an internationally recognized framework for companies to develop an actionable environmental management system (EMS) to minimize environmental impact while complying with applicable laws and regulations. An ISO 14001-certified management system equips your business to establish, implement, and maintain processes to mitigate environmental hazards and reduce risks in the long-term.

ISO 14001 can be integrated with other management systems standards, such as ISO 9001, to help collate efforts to accomplish company-wide organizational goals.

Why is ISO 14001 important?

Businesses worldwide are coming under greater scrutiny regarding their environmental impact and the actions and measures they take to reduce or offset activities that harm the environment. Whether it’s climate change, water and waste management, the depletion of resources or biodiversity, or the use of safe, recyclable materials — organizations have a huge part to play in the preservation and protection of the natural world. And this is becoming more and more clearly reflected in the legislative and regulatory changes that governments are adopting globally.

By providing a framework that an organization can follow, rather than establishing environmental performance requirements, ISO 14001 sets the foundation from which organizations can continually improve their environmental performance. This can include:

• Proactively minimizing the company’s environmental footprint
• Ensuring compliance with relevant legal requirements
• Setting, targeting, and achieving environmental objectives for the organization

According to the International Organization for Standardization, “ISO 14001 offers a structured approach for businesses to address these pressing concerns.” It provides a proactive approach for corporations to manage their environmental impact in various areas, such a waste reduction, energy conservation, and cost savings.

More than this, ISO 14001 certification tells the world that your organization is dedicated to doing its part for a sustainable future and can be trusted to take its environmental responsibilities seriously — a significant factor for global trade, supply chains, and stakeholder engagement.

What does ISO 14001 cover?

The ISO 14001 standard is a comprehensive framework that covers the following areas regarding what your EMS requires to fulfil certification requirements:

Context of the organization

Outlining the requirements for defining and understanding the organization to most effectively implement an EMS. This includes identifying internal and external issues, interested parties and their expectations, and the processes and scope of the EMS.

Leadership

Under ISO 14001, top management are pivotal in the EMS implementation. Executive commitment to the EMS means having a top-down approach to the system, including defining and communicating the environmental policy, assigning roles, and establishing specific responsibilities across the business.

Planning

The ongoing functionality of the EMS is a significant point of consideration in its development. It’s therefore important to identify and assess the potential risks and opportunities the EMS may uncover. Additionally, improvement plans must be established that align with the environmental objectives laid out in the EMS — including assessments of how organizational processes affect the environment and what legal commitments are required.

Support

It’s important to establish a strong support foundation for the overall management of all resources for the EMS. This includes requirements regarding competence, awareness, communication, and information control  — such as the documents and records needed to manage processes.

Operation

This section requires a detailed assessment of the environmental controls needed by the organizational processes. It also requires the identification of potential emergency situations and details of planned responses should an emergency occur.

Performance evaluation

One of the most important elements of a robust EMS is the ability to monitor whether it’s functioning well. The performance evaluation section needs to detail how processes will be monitored and measured, including environmental compliance assessments, internal audits, and ongoing reviews from management.

Improvement

In accordance with the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle, a company’s EMS should be designed to accommodate continual improvement over time. As such, process non-conformity assessments and corrective action measures are required as part of the EMS outline.

How many companies are ISO 14001 certified?

According to ISO’s 2022 global survey, there were more than 500,000 certifications for ISO 14001 in over 180 countries at that time.

How to get ISO 14001 certification

Achieving certification in ISO 14001 requires an organization to both develop and implement an effective environmental management system (EMS), with a series of distinct aspects to cover in both the development and implementation stages:

1. EMS development

The first step toward certification is to develop an EMS that meets the requirements of the ISO 14001 standard. To do this, companies will initially need to identify environmental aspects and impacts that are relevant to operations. Based on these findings, the business can establish and set environmental objectives and targets that can be monitored and measured. Operational controls designed to minimize environmental impact will also need to also be established at this stage.

2. EMS implementation

Once the EMS has been fully designed and development, it can be implemented across the business.

To ensure its effectiveness, implementation needs to also include training employees, continued monitoring of environmental performance, and regular reviewing and updating of the EMS where required — instilling an ethos of continual improvement.

Achieve ISO 14001 compliance with Enhesa

One of the requisites for ISO 14001 compliance is to maintain documented information necessary to support the operation of processes in line with relevant regulatory requirements, including demonstrating the means to remain abridged of updates and changes that may affect business operations.

With Enhesa’s EHS Intelligence solutions, businesses can fulfil this requirement.

Company-wide access to our regulatory compliance intelligence will show that a business has the means to:

• Identify regulations and requirements and determine applicability
• Have clear, consolidated knowledge and understanding of your obligations
• Have a clear demonstrable, central, and standardized process in place to evaluate and maintain knowledge of compliance
• Monitor and record actions
• Provide a continuous view on the status of the process and the status of compliance at site, regional, and global levels