EDITED BY CHRISTOPHER SHELDON
ISO
14001
and Beyond
ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS IN THE REAL WORLD
SHELDON
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Foreword by John Elkington, SustainAbility, UK
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T THE start of what promises to be a worldwide explosion of interest instand-..ardised EMSs, ISO 14001 and Beyondtakes a global look at their creation, their use, and their limitations, attempting to discover the essential truth about this impor-tant management tool and where it will take industry.
Divided into three sections covering the background to ISO 14001, important current trends and case studies showing examples of tactical responses from the Real World,
ISO 14001 and Beyond assembles the ideas of leading international thinkers and practitioners in the field, giving you the opportunity to read what some of the best minds have made of the standard so far and what they think lies ahead.
This is a timely and interesting work both for environment management professionals and for all those interested in the business and environment debate.
Jonathon Porritt, Forum for the Future
ISO 14001 and Beyondprovides a unique overview of progress to date and gives the reader an informed look into the future.
John Elkington, Chairman, SustainAbility
ISO 14001 and Beyond...reminds us that any standard is a benchmark for excellence and a catalyst for improvement and success. The case histories and the strategic
reviews alone are a source of inspiration and competitive advantage. Claude Fussler, Vice President, DOW Europe
ISO 14001 and Beyondis an essential book for the forward-looking (and -thinking) in the late 1990s.
Oswald A. Dodds, Chairman, ISO/TC207/SC1 (EMS), Chairman, BSI Committee Responsible for BS 7750
Christopher Sheldonis the Director of Green Inck, an international environmental consultancy,
advising companies of all sizes on strategy, training and communications. In addition to this work, he is an author, broadcaster, trainer, lecturer and academic referee on environmental manage-ment, sustainability and related subjects. Prior to starting his own company, he was the senior environmental policy advisor to the British Standards Institution for five years, a Director on the main Council of the Environmental Auditors Registration Association (EARA), and the developer of several EMS-related training courses. He has been involved in the creation and implementa-tion of EMS standards (BS7750/ISO14001/EMAS) since their incepimplementa-tion in 1989.
Greenleaf
Publishing
ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS IN THE REAL WORLD
ISO
14001
and Beyond
Aizlewood’s Mill Nursery Street, Sheffield S3 8GG, UK Tel: +44 (0)114 282 3475 Fax: +44 (0)114 282 3476 [email protected]
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Cover photographs by Matt Partridge
ISO 14001 and Beyond:
Environmental Management Systems in the Real World
edited by
Christopher Sheldon
Greenleaf
Publishing
1997
ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS IN THE REAL WORLD
ISO
14001
and Beyond
© 1997 Greenleaf Publishing unless otherwise stated.
Published by Greenleaf Publishing Greenleaf Publishing is an imprint of Interleaf Productions Limited
Broom Hall Sheffield S10 2DR England
Typeset by Interleaf Productions Limited and printed on environmentally friendly,acid-free paper from managed forests by The Cromwell Press, Melksham,Wiltshire.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system,or transmitted,in any form or by any
means,electronic,mechanical,photocopying,recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission in writing of the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data:
ISO 14001 and beyond : environmental management systems in the real world
1.Environmental responsibility 2. Environmental protection -Standards I.Sheldon, Christopher 658.4 ' 08 ' 0218 ISBN 1874719012 Pbk ISBN 1874719063 Hbk
Foreword 7
John Elkington
Introduction: ISO 14001 and Beyond: EMS in the Real World 11
Christopher Sheldon
Part 1
Laying Down the Law: How Self-Regulation Came of Age
1.Beyond 14001: An Introduction to the ISO 14000 Series 19
Dick Hortensius and Mark Barthel
2.Neither International nor Standard:
The Limits of ISO 14001 as an Instrument of Global Corporate Environmental Management 45
Harris Gleckman and Riva Krut
3. The ISO 14001 Environmental Management Systems Standard:
One American’s View 61
Christopher L. Bell
4. Squaring the Circle:
Fundamental Barriers to Effective Environmental Product Labelling 93
Mark Smith
5. Trade, Competitiveness and the Environment 109
Donal O’Laoire
6. Environmental Management Standards and Certification:
Do They Add Value? 127
Tim J. Sunderland
Part 2
Coping Strategies: Important Trends
7.Environmental Management Systems: Challenges for Russian Manufacturing Industry 141
Jim Hutchison, Anatoly Pichugin and Ann Smith
8.Attitudes and Experiences of the Japanese Business Community
vis-à-vis EMS Standards 155
Tomoko Kurasaka
Contents
9.Environmental Management Systems: ISO 14001 Issues for Developing Countries 169
Aidan Davy
10.Training and Environmental Management Systems 183
Andy Wells
11. Environmental Management Standards: Who Cares? 197
Andrew Blaza and Nicky Chambers
12. Targeting Sustainability: The Positive Application of ISO 14001 211
Philip Sutton
13. From EMAS to SMAS: Charting the Course from Environmental Management to Sustainability 243
Andrea Spencer-Cooke
Part 3
Tactical Responses: Managers at the Greenface
14. Beyond ISO 14001: Ontario Hydro’s Environmental Management System 263
Philip M. Stoesser
15. EMAS Implementation at Hipp in Germany 279
Matthias Gelber, Bernhard Hanf and Sven Hüther
16. Training: Preparations for Maintaining Effective Environmental Management Systems 293
Gabriele Crognale
17. Eco-Management and Audit Scheme for UK Local Authorities: Three Years On 309
Nigel Riglar
18. Environmental Management Standards: What do SMEs Think? 333
Ruth Hillary
19. Towards Innovative, More Eco-Efficient Product Design Strategies 359
J.M. Cramer
20. Establishing Workable Environmental Objectives 371
Alison Bird
21. Environment Risk: Assessment, Management and Prevention of Loss 385
David Shillito
Biographies 403
F
EW FIELDS breed acronyms as prolifically as the environment and, increasingly,sustainable development. Some—such as DDT,CFCs or PCBs—are borrowed directly from other fields;some (such as TQEM, or Total Quality Environmental Management) are adapted to meet new needs; others,however,evolve directly in response to the requirements of environmental management. Just when we had all finally come to terms with CER,DfE,EIA,LCA and EMAS,for example,up pops EMS. In contrast with some acronyms,which are here today and gone tomorrow,this is one that looks set to be around for decades.In recent years,we have all learned to talk about our environmental man-agement systems—rather like our web-sites—as if we have had them for years,which for most of us is not the case. But the new focus on the EMS,or environmental management system, is necessary, welcome and, indeed, overdue.
Worldwide,the publication of the ISO 14001 EMS standard,alongside the European Union’s EMAS approach to EMS and environmental reporting,is adding real urgency to the debate. ISO 14001 and Beyond provides a unique overview of progress to date and gives the reader an informed look into the future. The book pulls together EMS experts from Europe,North America and the Asia-Pacific region.
If we had approached the environmental management challenge logically, the EMS evolutionary process would have been very different. Consider. The late 1980s saw a growing interest in the concept of environmental auditing, although most progress was made in Europe in the early years of the 1990s. Some companies that had audited their operations for years warned that
Foreword
John Elkington
Chairman, SustainAbility
Chairman, The Environment Foundation
Member, EU Consultative Forum on the Environment
many of those promoting auditing saw it as a stepping stone to mandatory public reporting of environmental emissions and performance. In the event, this was the way things developed,although the main impetus in the field of corporate environmental reporting to date—with most initiatives still under-taken on a voluntary basis—has been a new sense of corporate citizenship.
As more and more companies join the ranks of the report-makers,however, reporting remains haunted with a paradox. Logically,before companies began to report externally on environmental performance, initial efforts should have been focused upon developing appropriate environmental accounting methodologies for measuring performance and then installing full manage-ment structures and systems for auditing against these. Only then would a company environmental report be produced.
So much for the ideal approach. In practice,companies have tended to kick off with auditing,followed by reporting. Only now are many of them—hav-ing already committed themselves to reportthem—hav-ing—startthem—hav-ing to think about whether their EMS,if it even exists,is up to the task. Very few companies have taken the next step and started to consider the implications and appli-cations of environmental and full-cost accounting techniques.
Nonetheless, the emergence of a full-blown, international discussion of environmental accounting, and of the relevant performance indicators, is only a question of time. This is the deep-seated transition that is under way behind the fleeting fashions described by Chris Sheldon in his excellent Introduction.
Most,if not all,of the contributors would agree that environmental man-agement systems are necessary—and that international standards and some forms of certification can add real value. Paradoxically,this is true even at a time of growing globalisation and international competition. In the old order,globalisation and competition would have been used as arguments for throttling back in the environmental area. In the emerging world order,with growing attention being focused on the real and perceived environmental performance of materials, products,processes, companies,industries,and even entire economies,the competitive challenge now is one of integrating the latest environmental management systems and tools as fast as possible— and certainly before key customers begin insisting on their existence and use as a basic condition of supply contracts.
Almost all of the contributors would accept that the ISO 14001 framework will push forward environmental management in thousands of companies worldwide. A number,particularly those in Part 3,explain what it is like to develop and operate EMS systems in companies or local authorities, and describe some of the barriers.
ISO 14001 and Beyond
8But there remain real questions about whether ISO 14001 will push progress fast enough, or in the right direction. The process of getting to ISO 14001 inevitably involved the dilution of many original ambitions,particularly in the face of sustained opposition from US business interests.
Longer term,we will see growing corporate interest in taking the ISO 14001, EMAS and ‘Responsible Care’EMS platforms and extending them to cope
with the very much more challenging requirements imposed by the sustainable development agenda. Internally, the challenge will be to integrate health, safety,environmental and quality management systems,wherever possible. Externally,stakeholder dialogue will be a key component of successful cor-porate environmental strategies,a point well made by Andrew Blaza and Nicky Chambers.
Whatever your business or area of activity,EMS standards and require-ments will have an impact. Market approaches and instrurequire-ments will increas-ingly replace heavy-handed command-and-control approaches to environ-mental protection, and self-regulation will very often be the name of the game. As a result,EMS standards such as ISO 14001 and EMAS will soon come under further evolutionary pressure. Before long, if work we did recently for European Partners for the Environment (EPE) comes to fruition, we may see a shift towards what we dub SMAS (or Sustainability Management and Auditing Scheme). Another of those ubiquitous,if useful,acronyms.
