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The ISO 14000 environmental management standards
exist to ensure products and services have the lowest possible environmental impact.
ISO 14000 is similar to ISO 9000 quality management in that both pertain to the process - the comprehensive outcome - of how a product is produced, rather than to the product itself. As with ISO 9000, certification is performed by third-party organisations rather than being awarded by ISO directly. The ISO 19011 audit standard applies when auditing for both 9000 and 14000 compliance at once - so 19011 is the ISO standard for any total quality management system.
origins
ISO 14000 originated in part with the US Environmental Protection Agency's pioneering use of pathway analysis to determine the likely human health impact of environmental ills, and with the Natural Step definition of sustainability.
standards
The material included in this family of specifications is very broad. The major parts of ISO 14000 are:
- ISO 14001 and ISO 14004: the initial standards, which introduce the idea of environmental management systems. These present a structured approach to setting environmental objectives and targets. Essentially, an organization may apply these broad conceptual tools to their own processes.
- These are extended and more or less superseded by
- ISO 14040 discusses pre-production planning and environment goal setting.
- ISO 14020 covers labels and declarations.
- ISO 14030 discusses post-production environmental assesment.
- ISO 14062 discusses making improvements to environmental impact goals.
- ISO 14063 is an addendum to 14020, discussing further communications on environmental impact.
- ISO 19011 which specifies one audit protocol for both 14000 and 9000 series standards together. This replaces ISO 14011 meta-evaluation — how to tell if your intended regulatory tools worked. 19011 is now the only recommended way to determine this.
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