Drivers For Use Start With Internal Efficiencies

Hundreds of companies such as Toyota, IBM, 3M, Texas Instruments, Anheuser-Busch Company, WMX Technologies and Georgia Pacific have already started implementing ISO 14001 with an eye toward certification. In January, SGS Thomson Microelectronics became the first company in the U.S. to be certified to ISO 14001 under a British accreditation program.

• The list of reasons companies are ISO 14001 includes the following:
• identifying areas for reduction in energy and other resource consumption
• reducing liability and risk
• improving compliance with legislative and regulatory requirements
• benefiting from regulatory and U.S. Sentencing Commission incentives, such as the U.S. EPAs new auditing policy that rewards companies showing environmental leadership through certified compliance with an EMS
• preventing pollution and reducing waste, realizing savings
• improving internal management methods, realizing savings
• responding to pressure from shareholder groups
• improving community goodwill
• interest in attracting a high-quality work force
• profiting in the market for green products
• responding to insurance company pressure for proof of good management before issuing pollution incident coverage.
  

Gehl agrees that smaller companies such as those in the plating and finishing industry will find many common-sense elements in ISO 14001 that are simply good business management practices.

"Since weve already started on that path to ISO 14001," Gehl says, "were looking for ways to maximize efficiencies using a succinct, easily understood, and publicly accepted standard. It can be used different ways by just about anybody."TC 207 delegates have worked diligently to ensure that ISO 14001 can be used by any sized company in any industry in any country. Many analysts fear that ISO 14001 will cost too much and be beyond the reach of small and medium-sized enterprises. Therefore, groups in several countries -- including Brazil, Ireland, Canada, and the US -- are developing implementation guides for small companies.

ISO 14001 is not for use only by an entire site or organization; it can be implemented piecemeal from the corporate level to the single unit level.

Other Standards Offer Support

While ISO 14001 is the foundation standard, others in the series will provide tools for specific aspects of the standard. One key document is the ISO 14004 EMS guidance document -- a detailed "how-to" for implementing ISO 14001.

You will find guidance for both internal and external audits in the ISO 14010 standard on auditing principles, ISO 14011/1 on procedures and ISO 14012 on auditor qualifications. It is up to the individual countries to develop accreditation criteria for auditors, courses, and certification (registration) bodies.

The ISO 14031 environmental performance evaluation standard is aimed at helping you measure the environmental impacts of your processes and improvement of performance. While this is the hoped-for outcome of ISO 14001, it is in this standard that guidance will exist.

Environmental labeling is the subject of the SO 14020 standards that cover everything from labeling principles and practices to standards for practitioner programs. These are the standards most likely to affect your corporate presence in the retail market, since they deal with product marks and their meanings and attempt to harmonize the 25 existing labeling standards. It is not directly related to the other standards.

Life cycle assessment (LCA) standards in the ISO 14040 series will help you evaluate the composition of products themselves and their individual effects on the environment, from cradle to grave. Creation of these standards is an immense task fraught with discussion over their feasibility. While LCA could become a tool within an ISO 14001 EMS, they are not linked now.

Delegates also decided to create a guide for other ISO standards writers on Environmental Aspects of Product Standards, ISO 14060.

The Chemical Manufacturers Association and the American Petroleum Institute are both looking at revising their management system standards such as Responsible Care, to be more in step with ISO 14001.

Whether To Seek Certification Depends On Your Motives

Both ISO 9000 and ISO 14001 require that your company states what it does, does what it states, and then evaluates its system. Whether that evaluation concludes with a formal third-party audit as part of certification or an informal internal review depends on the driving forces behind implementation.

"We are modeling many of our system against the 14000 standard, but until there is an economic drive to require us to go to certification," Kohler will not seek it, Gehl says.

As a member the U.S. Technical Advisory Group to ISO Technical Committee 207, which is developing the series of standards, Kohler is staying on top of the issue and has provided input on the standards development.

"One of the attractions of ISO 14001 is to use standardization and international acceptance of the standard to find some commonality for environmental management" among the diverse array of facilities at Kohler, Gehl says. "We are still going through the evaluation. To help prepare us as much as possible, where we come to a fork in the road in developing [our] EMS, weíre trying to look at ISO 14001 and adopt its requirements so there is a smaller gap to fill should Kohler seek certification."

System certification -- or registration as it is known in the U.S. -- consists of the following seven basic steps -- the first is really a "pre-certification" step.

1. Scope and Implementation
2. Application
3. Document Review
4. Pre-Assessment
5. Assessment
6. Certification -- There are three possible results of an assessment: approval, provisional approval, and disapproval.
7. Surveillance.
   

The Cost Of Certification Depends On Your Resources

While there is little objective data on ISO 14001 implementation costs, experience to date shows that the cost of certification varies according to the size of the company, the scope of the environmental system it has in place, the human resources it can allocate, and use of outside consulting. Many US companies at least have a rudimentary EMS in place, or many of the elements, but without the system, which is likely to lower their costs. Costs rise significantly for companies going for certification versus internal implementation.

Some estimate the costs are $12,000 to $15,000 for a company with 100 to 200 employees, slightly higher than an ISO 9000 audit for a äsimilarly sized company because of the complexity of environmental records. Others estimate that the cost of the whole ISO 14001 certification process, beginning with gap analysis and culminating with certification, could run from $40,000 to more than $100,000 for larger companies.

It is worthwhile to note that 3M Corporation has reportedly saved $1 billion since 1975 through an EMS approach, IBM realized energy savings of $32 million in 1990-91, and Sealtest Ice Cream company saved $3 million in 1994 using an EMS, according to Robert Ferrone, president of the Ferrone Group which specializes in integrating engineering, quality and environmental management systems.

To spare the expense of a separate audit, several companies have expressed interest in having joint audits performed for both ISO 14001 and ISO 9001 and several registrars are preparing to do this.

Legal, Trade And Other Issues Remain Unresolved

Unlike ISO 9000, the use of ISO 14000 standards will have significant legal implications and a broader stakeholder base. Among issues that arise are:

• confidentiality of audits and application under audit privilege laws
• the possibility that ISO 14001 and other standards will become
• the new "standards of care"
• the practical and legal affects of ISO 14000 use in government regulatory, enforcement and purchasing activities
• whether the standards will pose barriers to trade, and
• how environmental claims and labeling work with the Federal Trade Commission guides.
  

Other concerns include;

• increasing costs and administrative red tape that may not result in value
• misuse in the market to make false claims about corporate and product environmental performance
• lack of support among stakeholders who do not consider internal audits credible, or who do not accept the objectivity of third-party certification bodies
• gaining and keeping buy-in from top management and from the entire employee base.
  

Gehl echoes some of these concerns. "What I dont want to do is burden the operation people with one more system. Were looking at ways to try to leverage what theyre already doing to accommodate their quality, safety and environmental standards, to reach some synergy between those and to use time already spent on those other systems to try to integrate them into one overall management system."

Start In Small Steps

Gehls best advice to the metal finishing industry: "Cherrypick. Read the [ISO 14001] standard and pull out the parts that appear to be most germane." Then slowly build up to full conformance as you gain experience and advantages from the standard.

Chances are that implementing the standard will not be enough if you trade in Europe, for example. European companies already are asking their suppliers and contractors be certified to ISO 14001 much the way they ask for ISO 9000 certification.

Other experts advise newcomers to subscribe to voluntary initiatives on environmental management. Focus on current environmental management systems and work to improve them. Because there are many parallels between the two series, companies interested in preparing for ISO 14001 should be familiar with ISO 9000.

Design your environmental management system to conform to the ISO 14001 draft and integrate the system into your ISO 9000 framework as much as possible. You may need to perform a pre-audit assessment of your current EMS. This should help you avoid having to revise and rework your EMS.

Monitor the market for certification drivers such as state and federal EPA and Department of Energy requirements. Monitor your competition, your customers and your community to determine their level of expectation for objective assurances that you are handling your environmental responsibilities well.

If you operate in or export to other countries, you may wish to conduct a country analysis to determine likely certification requirements.

Develop an environmental auditing (EA) program or revise your present EA program, if necessary, to ensure that the auditors used by your organization meet the basic requirements of ISO 14001.

Develop an internal process to evaluate your environmental performance and communicate that performance both inside and outside the company. Review the environmental labeling standard definitions as they are developed to ensure that your products and services are not at a disadvantage.

Decide how you will integrate life-cycle thinking into management systems. Even after you develop your own life-cycle analysis standards, you should continually reexamine those methodologies and principles to avoid creating barrier-to-trade situations.

Keep abreast of developments or become involved in the standards development as an expert by joining the U.S. Technical Advisory Group, subscribing to publications that are current and credible for continuous information, or attending conferences and training for help with assessing and implementing the standards.

Surf the World Wide Web for information and sites to visit. You might begin with ISOs web site, whose Uniform Resource Locator (URL) address is ISO Online -- http://www.ANSI.org.