ISO14001

ISO14001 is the international standard for EMS, and is managed by the International Standards Organization (ISO). It is concerned with the way a business keeps track of environmental information (the system), rather than actual environmental achievements. When accredited to this standard, a business demonstrates its use of a formal system to track significant environmental issues, environment-related events, practices and information and its commitment to continuous improvement in environmental performance.

ISO 14001 is similar to and often develops out of conformance to other international standards, such as ISO9000, which relates to quality management (QM).

The key requirements for achieving ISO14001 are:

ISO Section 4.1 Scope (What does the EMS deal with)
ISO Section 4.2 Environmental Policy
ISO Section 4.3 Planning
ISO Section 4.4 Implementation and Operation
ISO Section 4.5 Checking
ISO Section 4.6 Management Review.

Sections 4.3 to 4.6 form the plan-do-check-review cycle, which is necessary to drive the goal of continuous improvement. Once a business has ISO14001, in order to maintain the certification it must commit to a process of regular independent audits of the system.