On October 30, 2001, the management team committed to proceed with the proposed implementation of the ISO 14000 Environmental Management System (EMS) program. This report will provide the elements of ISO 14000 and implementation procedures.

DEFINITIONS

Environmental Aspect: an element of an organization's activities, products or services that can interact with the environment

Environmental Impact: any change to the environment, whether adverse or beneficial, wholly or partially resulting from an organization's activities, products or services

Environmental Policy: a statement by the organization of its intentions and principles in relation to its overall environmental performance, which provides a framework for action and for the setting of environmental objectives and targets

WHY WE CHOSE ISO 14000

Certification to ISO14001 is rapidly becoming a necessary qualification to remain competitive in the global marketplace. Since our company conducts business internationally (with the majority of business in Europe), implementing ISO 14000 should provide us with more customers and competitive advantage. In addition, ISO 14000 is a necessity for us to comply with our contractual agreements in Europe.

Our company wants to meet and exceed federal and state environmental laws and regulations. We want to lessen environmental impacts, raise environmental performance, and continuously improve. We desire to implement a program that achieves our environmental goals and makes us an environmentally responsible company.

PROGRAM ELEMENTS

The ISO 14000 standard is a voluntary standard (i.e., federal and state regulations do not require us to use it), which requires a company to develop and maintain a system that includes the following elements:

• An environmental policy
• Documentation of environmental aspects and impacts of products, activities and services
• Environmental objectives and measurable targets
• Programs to meet objectives and targets
• Verification and corrective action
• Management review

DEVELOPING OUR ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

We will develop our system with the following three items in mind:

• People
• Processes
• Review and Continuous Improvement

People

Every department will select a management representative to serve on the ISO 14000 management team.

The management team will provide training for each employee. The training sessions will meet once per week for six weeks. The training and implementation manual topics are as follows:

• Why Is ISO 14000 Useful?
• Documenting EMS procedures
• Developing an Environmental Policy
• Determining Environmental Objectives and Targets
• Corrective Action and Verification
• Continuous Improvement
• Self-Audits

The management representative of each department will provide his/her employees with current process changes as the program proceeds and matures. It is the employee's responsibility to update and maintain his/her manual.

Your management representative will give you a specific clause of the standard and expect you to apply it accurately. Each department is required to hold an implementation meeting every two weeks for a total of twelve weeks to verify progression and discuss questions and concerns. The company will post the meeting minutes on the intranet.

After the twelve weeks, each department will meet to ensure every employee has applied his/her clause of the standard correctly. After sixteen weeks, the company will perform a self-audit, resolve any corrective actions that result from the audit, then, hire the services of a registrar to carry out the official audit for ISO 14000 registration.

Processes

All of the company's operations will undergo a review to determine the level of environmental management required. The department managers are responsible for the review, which includes the following:

• Applicable environmental legislation and regulations (An example would include Community-Right-To-Know reporting)
• Environmental impacts and aspects of activities, products and services (An example of an activity would be the manufacture of battery-operated vehicles. An example of an aspect to this activity would be the disposal of the batteries. An impact to this activity would be the actual and potential leakage of battery fluid into the environment)
• Identification of national and international customer contractual requirements (An example would be customers in Europe where ISO 14000 is a requirement to conduct business)

Once the review is complete, each department who has recognized an environmental responsibility will identify the following:

• Environmental objectives and targets (An example of an objective would be to minimize water wherever practical. The target to this objective would be to reduce water consumption at selected sites by 15% within one year.)
• Resources needed in the form of personnel, training, equipment, and funds
• Processes that require monitoring and reporting (For example, the monitoring of battery fluid manufacture and reporting chemicals used in the process and disposal)
• Processes that need documentation
• Processes that require measurements and evaluations (An example includes the measurement of chemical toxicity of battery fluid and spreadsheets that show continuous evaluations)

Review and Continuous Improvement

At our company, we wish to review and continually improve our environmental management system, with the objective of improving its overall environmental performance.

All departments will conduct an annual review of their department's environmental system, which will include review of the following:

• Environmental objectives, targets and performance
• Internal audit findings
• EMS effectiveness
• Suitability of the EMS in light of changing legislation, advances in technology, and marketing
  

The concept of continuous improvement is achieved by continually evaluating the environmental performance of the EMS against its environmental policies, objectives and targets. Each manager is responsible for the following:

• Identify areas of opportunity for improvement (An example would be to identify what areas of the process we could recycle hazardous materials.)
• Determine the root cause of nonconformances (An example of a nonconformance might be measurement errors on fluid toxicity levels and the root cause might be instruments out of calibration)
• Develop and implement a plan of corrective and preventive action to address root causes (For example, the plan might include developing a database spreadsheet documenting the problem, corrective action taken, and root cause)
• Verify the effectiveness of the corrective and preventive actions (For example, a database including the problems, would also include a column for verification. Notations of the effectiveness of corrective action are then documented.)
• Documenting any changes in the procedures resulting from process improvements
• Make comparisons with objectives and targets

REFERENCES

• ISO Information Center
• International Organization of Standardization. Environmental Management Systems - General Guidelines on Principles, Systems and Supporting Techniques