ISO 14000 Making the Transition
from Thinking Quality... to Building an Environmental Management System
- What is the total life cycle cost of a newly developed product?
- How do a manufacturer‘s production processes truly impact the environment?
- In what ways is an ISO 14000 system differentiated from that of ISO 9001?
- How can a company protect the environment and maintain its bottom line
These are some of the questions addressed during development of the ISO 14000 international standard for environmental management systems (EMS). Global acceptance of the ISO 9000 series of quality management systems standards (QMS) in the 1990‘s has set the stage for a similar explosion within the environmental community.
In addition, the significant and highly publicized concerns over rising energy demand, global warming, cost and environmental impacts of increasing levels of fossil fuel consumption, and environmental degradation in both developed and emerging economies have created widespread interest and market and government-driven requirements for improved environmental performance, energy conservation, improved technologies, and materials substitution as envisioned by environmental management systems implementation and improvements.
This document will attempt to explain and simplify EMS for businesses in a global context. ISO 14000 is a companion to the ISO 9000 series of quality standards, but to state that ISO 14000 is the environmental equivalent of ISO 9000 would be both false and misleading.
In adopting ISO 14000, the national bodies comprising the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) went a step beyond the ISO 9000 effort. Instead of simply adapting quality systems, ISO 14001 exists as a single, universally applicable organizational standard for environmental management.