All About ISO

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 of ways.  Many of our clients have benefited from the performance of a third-party environmental compliance audit which served to identify the requirements as well as assess the organization's compliance with the requirements at the same time.  This serves to full the requirement of Section 4.5.2 Evaluation of Compliance (added during the 2004 revision to the ISO 14001 Standard) which requires the organization establish, implement and maintain a procedure for periodically evaluating compliance with applicable legal and other requirements.