What is the ISO 14000 family of international standards?
What is the major feature of these standards?
CONTENTS


It is becoming obvious nowadays that disregard of the requirements of environmental security and rational use of natural resources entails in the end lowering of competitiveness of products, services and the enterprise as a whole. Unfavourable ecological image of enterprises more and more impedes them in their efforts to enter the external market.

Stable development of entities, enhancing of their competitiveness calls for, as is well known, a complete solution of environmental, technical, economic and social problems. That, in turn, suggests a cardinal change - over from control of the consequences of noxious pollution of the environment to preventing of the pollution itself, minimization of the damage, getting the most out of recycling, treatment of earlier accumulated waste by using environment - friendly procedures.

An efficacious ecological policy provides for the EMS to be inherent to administering an enterprise and monitoring the quality of its produce.

Development and promotion  of the ISO 14000 family of international standards in the field of environmental management systems (EMS)  is now one of the most important international nature protecting initiatives.

The ISO 14000 standards are worked out by the  Technical committee 207 (ISO/TC207) of the   International Organization for Standardization - ISO

Delegations of environmental experts from 66 countries, including 27 developing ones, take part now in the activity of this committee. Besides, 35 international non - governmental institutions and business organizations are in standing co - operation with the ISO/TC207.

The first standards of the ISO 14000 family were officially adopted and published yet at the end of 1996.

It were the British BS 7750 standards and international standards on production quality control systems (ISO 9000) that have served as models for the ISO 14000 standards.

The main task of the ISO 14000 standards consists in contributing to protection of the environment from pollution under the condition that economical and social necessities of the enterprise itself are fully satisfied.

The system of ISO 14000 standards substantially differs from many others, including the nature protecting ones.

These standards are oriented  not on the quantitative parameters  (effluents amount, impurities concentration, etc.), and  not on the technologies  (application or not application of some specified techniques).

The main subject of these ISO 14000 standards is  the Environmental Management System - EMS.

Hence, the typical provisions of the standards envisage the need the enterprises (organizations) experience in certain managerial procedures to be introduced, certain documents to be drawn up, a person responsible for a certain domain to be appointed.

Thus, these provisions of the ISO 14000 standards concern the three major aspects, namely:
  • the organisational structure and the responsibility system;
  • the managerial procedures;
  • the system of documentation.
As an example, the basic document of the ISO 14001 family contains no "absolute" requirements as for an enterprise's influence on the environment, excluding, perhaps, the item that an enterprise must declare in the ecological policy determination its willingness to observe related national standards.

Such character of the standards is conditioned by the provision that the ISO standards, being international ones, must not intrude into the sphere of national norms and standards.

The ISO 14000 standards are  "volunteer"  ones. They do not replace the laws and standards currently in force but determine how an enterprise influences on the nature, and how the requirements of environmental protection are observed.

The ISO 14000 standards are meant to ensure reduction of unfavourable influence on the nature in three aspects:
  • by improving the environmental "conduct" of the industry and agriculture (organizational level);
  • by adopting appropriate supplementary laws to the national legislature and forming a new governmental ecological policy (national level);
  • by improving international trade conditions (international level).
"Think universally, act locally" - this well known creed concerning solution of environmental problems expresses the objective of many standards, as well