Hello! My name is Susan Burkett and I am a Senior Engineer and Office Manager in the Lancaster, Pennsylvania office of August Mack Environmental, Inc. I have spent the past 18 years working on projects related to environmental, health and safety (EH&S) compliance for government, industrial, manufacturing and commercial facilities in Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Feel free to give me a call at 717.399.9587 or send me an e-mail at sburkett@augustmack.com to discuss any of the topics I post in my blog.Hello! My name is Susan Burkett and I am a Senior Engineer and Office Manager in the Lancaster, Pennsylvania office of August Mack Environmental, Inc. I have spent the past 18 years working on projects related to environmental, health and safety (EH&S) compliance for government, industrial, manufacturing and commercial facilities in Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Feel free to give me a call at 717.399.9587 or send me an e-mail at sburkett@augustmack.com to discuss any of the topics I post in my blog.Section 4.3.2 Legal and Other Requirement of the
ISO 14001
Standard specifies that an organization identify both the legal and
other requirements that apply to its environmental
aspects. Although not specifically stated, the legal
requirements have been interpreted to mean the environmental legislation
and accompanying regulations that apply to the
organization's operations. Compiling a comprehensive
list of the environmental requirements
for your organization can be accomplished in a variety...Read More »
Section 4.3.1 Environmental aspects of the
ISO 14001 environmental
management system (EMS) standard specifies that an
organization establish and maintain a procedure or procedures to
identify the environmental aspects of
its activities, products, or services that it can control and over
which it can be expected to have an influence, in order to
determine those which have or can have significant impacts on the
environment. As the standard does not specify how an
organization is to identify its en...
Read More »The environmental
policy can be the shortest section of your
ISO 14001 environmental
management system (EMS) but is can require longer
that you anticpate to develop it for the following reasons:
- The environmental policy has to be defined by top management
- The environmental policy must be made available to the public
- The environmental policy must
be facility/company specific and incorporate the following:
- Pollution Prevention
- Compliance with Legal and Other Requirements
- Continual Improvement.
By this time we should all have
recovered from the holidays and be well on our way to achieving our
New Years resolutions. For anyone who is planning to achieve
ISO 14001 certification in 2012 you will want to have a timeline
prepared and be diligently working through the specific tasks to
achieve this goal. If you haven't developed a timeline to
develop, implement and certify your ISO 14001 environmental
management system (EMS) yet, here are just a few of the items
that should be on it:
- Develop...
If you are not motivated by the thought of saving thousands of dollars in operating costs, raw material costs and waste disposal costs as a result of obtaining ISO 14001 certification of your environmental management system then you might be interested in some of the other benefits. These include:
- Good public relations - the facility’s image with the public, regulatory agencies, lenders, and investors will be enhanced
- Improvement in environmental performance - the facility will experience...
There is no denying that attaining ISO 14001 certification of your environmental management system (EMS) requires financial resources. However, once a facility is certified, there is an opportunity to recoup some of the money spent in attaining the certification. One of the underlying principles of ISO 14001 is to create a program that if implemented will show continual improvement. This continual improvement is achieved and measured as part of the implementation of the EMS by evaluating on a...
Read More »It’s kind of strange listing an EMS document as one of the musts to successfully obtain ISO 14001 certification of an environmental management system (EMS) when the ISO14001 standard doesn’t actually require an EMS manual to be developed. Sure there is the requirement to develop documentation as part of your ISO 14001 program (quite a lot of documentation in fact), but there is actually no requirement to develop an EMS manual. So why develop one? The same reason we document all sorts of things...
Read More »There is no getting around the fact that obtaining ISO 14001 certification of your environmental management system will require a commitment of financial and personnel resources. Financial resources will be required for items such as external training classes, consulting support, retaining a registrar to perform the registration audit and periodic surveillance audits to maintain the certification, and miscellaneous support items including signage, communication devices, office supplies, etc....
Read More »Four of the most important items needed to obtain ISO 14001 Environmental Management System certification are:
- A driver (a reason for obtaining the certification)
- A commitment of financial and personnel resources
- An gap analysis (initial audit) of your existing ISO 14001 EMS
- An Environmental Management System document.
A company that is considering pursuing ISO 14001 certification should initially determine what is driving their decision. Who cares if there’s a reason to obtain...
Read More »Having just attended the 2011 National Safety Council's Congress and Expo in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, I thought it would be a good time to remind everyone about the IS0 Occupational Health and Safety Management System standard (OHSAS) (ISO 18001). ISO 18001 was introducted in 2007 and can be applied to any facility that wishes to:
- Establish an OH&S management system to eliminate or minimize risk to employees and other interested parties who may be exposed to OH&S risks associated with...
In assisting companies in attaining ISO 14001 certification I
am often asked about guidance in preparing an ISO 14001 Environmental Management System
(EMS) Manual. The ISO 14001 standard does
not include specifications for an ISO 14001 EMS Manual as
the standard does not require an EMS manual be developed.
However, the majority of companies achieving ISO 14001 certification develop an
EMS
Manual. Some of the documentation that may be included
in an EMS
Manual could include:
- Personnel...
The ISO 14001 Environmental Management System
(EMS) standard specifies that an organization shall
establish and maintain procedures to identify potential for and
respond to accidents and emergency situations, and
for preventing and mitigating the environmental impacts that
may be associated with them. With recent natural disasters
such as earthquakes, hurricanes and floods in the news, it seems
that preparing for an emergency would be at the top of
our priority lists. In conducting environmenta...
Read More »In order for your
ISO 14001 environmental
management system to be consistent with the 2004
version of the standard, your facility must verify
compliance
with environmental regulations
through a documented third-party environmental compliance audit. August
Mack Environmental, Inc. has assisted clients with their
environmental
consulting needs by performing third-party environmental compliance auditing in
states throughout North American including Pennsylvania, Indiana,
Ohio, Michigan and Missouri.
Read More »As part of developing and implementing an ISO 14001 environmental management system (EMS), a facility will set objectives and targets. This process can be difficult without a clear understanding of the difference between an objective and a target as defined in the standard. The standard defines these terms as follows:
- environmental objective - as an overall environmental goal, consistent with the environmental policy, that an organization sets itself to achieve.
- environmental target - a...
Selecting an ISO 14001 Registrar to provide third-party
certification of your ISO 14001 environmental management system is
an important part of the certification process. There are a
number of factors that should be considered in the selection
process including:
- Accreditation status of the Registrar
- The Registrar's experience in performing ISO 14001 certification audits
- Qualifications of the employees performing the certification audit
- Familiarity of the auditors with your specific operations
- Referen...
Resources for developing an
ISO 14001 environmental
management system may be accessed through your
state regulatory agency website. In Pennsylvania, the
Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) has
compiled references to assist facilities in developing ISO 14001 environmental
management sytems which can be found at
www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/deputate/pollprev/Iso14001/EMSGuides.htm.
For those of you maintaining an
ISO 14001 environmental
management system (EMS) or perhaps pursuing initial
ISO 14001
certification, the latest news on revisions to the standards or
development of new standards can be found on the International
Organization for Standardization (ISO) website at www.iso.org. As part of the Legal and
Other Requirements of your ISO
14001 program, consider reviewing any updates to
the standards annually. With regard to ISO 14001, there are
currently no planned...
Read More »Although you might not realize it
initially, a facility's efforts at becoming more
sustainable can actually be a
part of their ISO 14001
environmental management system. As part
of becoming more sustainable a facility may
conduct energy
audits or undertake improvement projects such
as changing their lighting or heating systems as part of an
overall sustainable business
strategy. These types of projects in addition to increasing
the sustainability of the organization
and improving the triple...
Read More »When I initially begin discussing
ISO 14001 Environmental
Management System (EMS) program development with
clients one question that almost always comes up is "What is a
gap analysis?"
In order to provide a foundation for everyone's understanding of a
gap
analysis let's look at the definition of
"gap." I have chosen the fourth definition listed in
Webster's New World Dictionary and Thesaurus", a lag or
disparity. In performing a gap analysis of an
Environmental Management
System as part of...
Read More »
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