ISTC can help your company identify improvements to your processes, support systems, and building envelope to help you meet the continuous improvement requirement for maintaining your ISO Certification.
You’ve Achieved ISO Certification — Now What?
You and your facility have put in the effort to prepare the Policies and Procedures, identify your significant Aspects and Impacts, train your employees, and receive certification from a third party. Now you must do what your policies state, including addressing your significant aspects. At this point, many facilities lose their direction. Addressing those aspects and impacts can be daunting.
You are an expert at producing your product, but making it more sustainably may be beyond your in-house expertise. That is where we can help.
With over 30 years of experience helping Illinois manufacturers across nearly every industry, we can identify improvements to your processes, support systems, and building envelope to help you meet the continuous improvement requirements for maintaining your ISO Certification.
How ISTC Can Assist Your Facility
Define Environmental Management System (EMS) Scope
ISO 14001-certified entities must first define the scope included in the EMS. An Environmental Aspects and Impacts Assessment then centers on all activities, services, and products within a certified facility’s defined scope.
Identify Environmental Aspects
ISO 14001 requires certified facilities to establish a procedure to identify environmental aspects and determine those aspects that have or can have a significant impact on the environment. Certified facilities should document findings. This documentation should be kept up to date, particularly when significant or potentially impactful changes in equipment, products, or services have been made. Identification should cover air, water, and land impacts, as well as natural resources and wildlife. Aspects should be divided into direct and indirect. Direct environmental aspects are associated with activities, products, and services of the organization itself, over which it has direct control (e.g., how you manage waste on your site). However, for non-industrial organizations, the focus will often be on indirect environmental aspects of their activities (e.g., how your subcontractor manages waste on your site, chain-controlled aspects, customer-controlled aspects).
Evaluate Significant Environmental Aspects
Each organization must establish its own significance criteria based on a systematic review of its environmental aspects and their actual and potential impacts. In assessing the significance, consider the following:
- potential to cause environmental harm
- size and frequency of the aspect
- importance to the stakeholders of the organization
- requirements of relevant environmental legislation
Criteria to Consider for Significance
- Required by legislation: CEISB can help identify which legal requirements your organization should monitor, control, and manage. ISO stipulates that environmental aspects that are not in compliance with regulatory requirements must be resolved before the certification process can be completed, unless agreements have been made with the associated authority.
- Potential for environmental harm: If your process uses extremely hazardous chemicals, the risk of environmental harm from a spill increases. Similarly, in the office environment, reducing wasted printing to decrease paper and electricity use might be more of a concern than other environmental aspects.
- Frequency of the activity: You may use some fairly harmful chemicals in specific processes or activities, but only occasionally; then these may not be considered significant potential impacts on the environment if a spill would be small and relatively contained.
- Company stakeholders: Company stakeholders go beyond your employees, investors, and customers. Stakeholders can include members of the community around your facilities and should be considered in the assessment.
If addressing these aspects and impacts has stalled at your facility, an external assessment may help refocus efforts and stimulate your EMS.