ISO 14001 Revision Receives Majority Support, Moves Forward

A revised version of ISO 14001 has received overwhelming support from ISO members, ensuring the draft international environmental management system standard will progress to the next step.

More than 80 percent of ISO members who were balloted voted to move the revision of ISO 14001 to a draft international standard, or DIS.

In November, the ISO 14001 Working Group released the Committee Draft 2, which then entered the three-month balloting period. The next meeting of the international working group that is drafting the standard will be held from Feb. 25 to March 1 to consider the comments submitted during the last consultation.

Martin Baxter (pictured), executive director of the Institute of Environmental Management & Assessment and the UK’s appointed expert on the revision to ISO 14001, says  the changes being proposed are significant, integrating environmental management into organization strategy and decision-making and adding more emphasis on improving environmental performance.

According to an IEMA member survey, more than 90 percent supported proposals for aligning environmental management systems with an organization’s strategy.

More than 84 percent of surveyed members support placing greater emphasis on reducing environment impacts across the whole life-cycle of products and services including supply chains and in the development and use of products and services. The survey also found that 92 percent of members believe the ISO 14001 needs to strengthen requirements on organizations to demonstrate their legal compliance and environmental performance improvements.

Some 88.5 percent of surveyed members say the ISO 14001 should require organizations to consider impacts from a changing environment.

A growing number of organizations are pursuing ISO 14001 certification. In its annual survey of certifications, the International Organization for Standardization said the number of ISO 14001 environmental management system certificates at the end of 2012 was up 9 percent to 285,844 over the previous year.