Environmental Management System Standard
Any organisation can have an environmental management system in place. The Draft ISO 14001 standard defines such a system as:
The organisational structure, responsibilities, practices, procedures, processes and resources for implementing environmental management.
Many companies and organisations in New Zealand already have such systems, but they are often not as comprehensive as this definition implies.
The purpose of the ISO 14001 standard is essentially to enable the international recognition of an individual company’s environmental management system. The relevance of the standard for the future can be clearly seen by following the development and uptake of the ISO 9000 quality standard. Although voluntary, customer pressure is resulting in the ISO 9000 quality standard becoming increasingly necessary to do business around the world. Similarly, the ISO 14001 environmental management standard may become a de facto requirement for being able to compete in many regions of the global marketplace.
The working draft of the ISO 14001 standard (available from Standards New Zealand) has been written in a way that tries to balance the need to apply to businesses of different sizes, and in all countries of the world. So while it covers aspects such as a commitment to continual improvement and compliance with applicable legislation and regulations, the standard does not establish absolute requirements for environmental performance. The target date for publication of the ISO 14001 standard is 1 January 1996. It is highly likely that there will be a draft international standard available from July 1995, and an interim New Zealand standard developed by September 1995.
Part of the pressure to get the standard completed and released is so that it can be accepted and used by the European Union (EU) alongside its Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS). The European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) has been given the task by the EU of harmonising the different national standards of the EU countries. CEN has agreed that if the ISO 14001 standard is ready in time, they will use it as their supplementary document to the EMAS system. If not, they have the option of developing their own. Such duplication, and potential inconsistencies, would be costly for exporters having to adhere to separate criteria.
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