Lecture 6: 13 January, 2009

ISO-14001 Standard: Environmetal Management Systems - Requirements with Guidance for use was first published in 1996 and was revised in 2004. About 130000 organizations all over the world have got themselves certified to ISO-14001 standard by 2008. Japan leads the number of ISO-14001 certifications, followed by China. Both depend on international trade for growing/maintaining their economies. ISO-14001 provides a shield against the use of environmental issues as non-tariff trade barriers by western and other developed countries.

We started with the structure of ISO-14001 (2004) Standard - PDCA - Plan -Do -Check-Act.

There are Four sections in ISO-14001 Standard; the operative part is Section 4.

Before establishing an environmental management system, an organization may carry out an initial review of its environmental issues, procedures, practices, legal requirements and past practices/accidents etc.

4.1 is about the commitment of the organization to establish an environmental management system

4.2 is about the Environmental Policy. The Environmental Policy has to be issued by the TOP MANAGEMENT. The following are the requirement of the environmental policy:

a. It should be appropriate to the nature, scale and environmental impacts of the organization
b. It should commit the organization to compliance with applicable legal and other requirements
c. It should commit the organization to continual improvement and prevention of pollution
d. It should be available to the public

We discussed the meaning of CONTINUAL improvement; i.e. improvement that takes place in one or more areas of the organization, resulting in the overall system improvement. Improvements need not take place in all the areas at the same time or all the time; but some of the areas need to show improvement. These are determined by the resources available to the organization.

We also discussed the meaning of PREVENTION of POLLUTION; according to this standard prevention of pollution need not be complete elimination of the pollutant; it can be a reduction of the pollution.

The meaning of "PUBLICLY AVAILABLE"is that the policy is not a confidential document and hence should be available to any stakeholder who has an interest in the policy.

I showed you a simple Environmental Policy and we checked if all the above elements were present in the displayed policy.

Planning is the First phase of the PDCA Cycle; we discussed the quotatiion: "IF YOU FAIL TO PLAN, YOU PLAN TO FAIL"

4.3 PLanning

4.3.1. Identifying and Assessment of Significant Aspects.

AN ASPECT is an element of the activity, product or service, that can have an impact on the environment. AN IMPACT is the change in the environmental condition, positive or negative.

We discussed the input-output model using the example of an activity like coffee making. The inputs are e.g. Milk, Coffee powder, Sugar, water, LPG Gas, cups, mugs etc. The desirable output is Coffee. There are quite a few un-desirable outputs, e.g. waste heat, waste water, packaging materials etc. These undesirable outputs can have an impact on the environment (hence can be classified as ASPECTS). These aspects for ALL the activities, products and services of the organization have to be identified and recorded. In one way of assessing these aspects, the following criteria are used to assess significance: a) the probability of occurrence, b) the frequency of occurrence, c) the probability of the impact on property, people, flora/fauna and the environment outside the organization and d) the long term effect of the impact. To this one can also add the relevance of the aspect to any legislative requirement. We discussed as to how the significance will vary based on the "size" of the activity, product or service (e.g. emission of alcohol in a bottle and that in a 15 tons tanker). We also discussed that we have to identify DIRECT & INDIRECT impacts (e.g. of indirect impact, electrical energy used in the activity is related to emission of carbon dioxide at the thermal power station, leading to global warming), POSITIVE and NEGATIVE impacts, impacts due to START-UP, SHUT DOWN, ACCIDENTS etc. We also discussed that we need to capture ALL these impacts in the PAST, PRESENT and FUTURE, before assessing the ASPECT. We discussed as to how to use the assessment score to prioritize the aspects as significant as well as to ensure continual improvement. One of the requirements, which is not explicit in the ISO-14001 standard, is to RECORD all the Aspects and Impacts identified, including the significant aspects.

The next step (which can be started concurrently with the initial review) is to identify applicable legal and other requirements.

4.3.2. Legal and other requirements. The organization should establish a procedure to identify and access legal and other requirements.

Legal requirements may be local (e.g. Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, Water (Prevention & Control of Pollution) Act, Consent for operations under the Air and Water Acts, Authorization under the Hazardous Waste (Management & Handling) Rules, etc.), Country / Region specific (especially if the organization exports to these countries, e.g. RoHS, WEEE, REACH etc.), or Global (where international protocols warrant action, e.g. Montreal Protocol, BASEL Convention etc.). Other requirements include company specific standards, guidelines, policies or industry specific requirements like "Responsible Care" of the Chemical Industry, "Electronics Industry Code of Conduct" of the electronics industry etc. It is a good practice to have a register of legal and other requirements and update it periodically.

The standard requires that the organization identifies as to how these legal and other requirements are related to the environmental aspects of the activities, products and services of the organization.

4.3.3. Objectives, Targets & Programmes

Once the organization identifies its significant environmental aspects and applicable legal and other requirements, it has to set its objecitves based on the overall intent provided by the Environmental Policy. Objetive is a goal to be achived by a particular time - say, for example, "to reduce energy consumption by 50 % by the year 2010". Target is specific measureable sub-goal, with well defined measurement index. Targets are normally SMART: S = Specific, M=Measureable, A=Achievable, R= Reasonable and T = Timebound. e.g. To reduce energy consumed per product (MJ/Piece) by 20 % by 2009. The Environmental Management Programme is an elaboration of how to achieve the target and goals, with specific responsibility, milestones for various activities, resources required, monitoring methods and review mechanism etc. Objectives on specific significant environmental aspects is one way of addressing significant environmental aspects, so that their impact is reduced once the programme is successfully completed.

In the socond part of the lecture

We started to read a new paper: The Parable of the Sadhu, by Bowen H. McCoy, (Harvard Business Reviews, May-June 1997). We have seen the responses and reactions of various mountain climbers when they came across an almost naked Sadhu who was about to die due to exposure to extreme cold; they wanted to reach the summit when conditions were favourable - but the Sadhu brought in an element of "delay" in their mission. Their different actions and differnt reasons / justification for their actions and ethical principles behind have been debated by the author. We have to start at "After my three months in Nepal...." in the next class on 19 January, 2009.