Introduction
ISO 14001 is the most famous international standard for environmental protection. This standard establishes how to implement an environmental management system applicable within organisations of any type, sector or size. The ISO 14001 standard aims to enable the organisation that adopts it to continuously improve any (direct/indirect) environmental impact related to its organisation and its processes.
How to obtain ISO 14001
To achieve this goal, the company will have to go through two main steps:
1) Preparation of its own environmental management system
- deepen and become aware of the requirements of the ISO 14001 standard
- carry out an analysis of your company in relation to what is required by the various requirements of the standard
- structure a documented management system (usually consisting of a manual, procedures and forms) to meet the requirements of ISO 14001
- integrate and apply the system set up, making sure that all the personnel of your company are aware of it and participate in it
- carry out internal audits to verify that your management system complies with ISO 14001 and that it is effectively implemented in your company
- carrying out management reviews to ascertain the degree of effectiveness achieved and to evaluate the benefits obtained by applying the management system
2) Being audited by a Certification Body
- choose a Certification Body and request to be audited for certification
- agree with the chosen Certification Body a date for the audit, which will be carried out by a Certification Body inspector at the company's premises
- during the audit, it is possible that the inspector may find shortcomings (non-conformities), in which case the company must agree on a formal commitment to resolve them
- once the audit has been completed and the resolution of any non-conformities found by the inspector has been agreed, the inspector will issue a report of conformity to ISO 14001
- within days of passing the audit, the Certification Body will issue the ISO 14001 certificate, which will be delivered to the customer
- in the following years, the Certification Body will carry out an annual surveillance audit to maintain the validity of the certification.