ISO 14000

ISO, The International Organization for Standardization, is a series of international standards. ISO is a sister organization to the WTO (World Trade Organization) and writes standards to facilitate international trade. Most of the ISO standards are physical and chemical standard. For example : Because of the ISO Standards ,the credit cards can be used all over the world. The ISO standards are reviewed at least every 5 years to make sure that they are still up to date.

The ISO 14000 is an entire series of standards which provides a framework for the development of an environmental management system and the supporting audit programme. It exist to help organizations minimize how their operations negatively affect the environment. The ISO 14000 is the standard which is used to certify organizations followed by the ISO 14001 which allows one to become registered as an ISO 14001 organization. ISO 14000 is similar to ISO 9000 quality management. The overall idea of the ISO 14000 standard is to establish an organized approach to systematically reduce the impact of the environmental aspects which an organization can control.

ISO 14001 is the corner stone standard of the ISO 14000 series. It specifies a framework of control for an Environmental Management System against which an organization can be certified by a third party. Other standards in the series are guidelines, which helps to achieve registration to ISO 14001. These include the following

ISO 14004 provides guidance on the development and implementation of environmental management systems

ISO 14010 provides general principles of environmental auditing (now superseded by ISO 19011)

ISO 14011 provides specific guidance on audit an environmental management system (now superseded by ISO 19011)

ISO 14012 provides guidance on qualification criteria for environmental auditors and lead auditors (now superseded by ISO 19011)

ISO 14013/5 provides audit program review and assessment material.

ISO 14020+ labeling issues

ISO 14030+ provides guidance on performance targets and monitoring within an Environmental Management System

ISO 14040+ covers life cycle issues

Of all these, ISO14001 is not only the most well known, but is the only ISO 14000 standard against which it is currently possible to be certified by an external certification authority.

ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 structurally have lots of things in common. Both the standards have written plans. Both the standards have other thing in common such as checking and corrective action, internal audit and review by the management. Development of a management system is common in both ISO 900 and ISO 14000.

ISO 14001 standard is about environmental planning which includes legal and environmental management programs. ISO14001 has an addition of emergency preparedness and response to its existing requirements, whereas ISO 9001 has requirements of organization, quality systems, training, document and data collection etc.

The management which applies ISO 14001 to its organization has more extensive responsibilities. It needs to consider environmental aspects in every management decisions. If you have ISO 9000 standards in your organization, then you are almost 75-80 percent ready for ISO 14000.

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