Changes to ISO 14001: Effects on companies

Sammanfattning: ISO 14001:2004 is the most commonly used standard for third-party certification of Environmental Management Systems (EMS) in the world. It is currently undergoing an upgrading process, which will affect all the companies certified to ISO 14001. A first draft has been produced, the Committee Draft 1 (CD1). The thesis has two research questions: What are the most likely changes in the new version of ISO 1400 standard compared with the current version (ISO 14001:2004)? How will these likely changes affect the EMS of companies that are already using ISO 14001? From the CD1, seven major categories of changes were identified: strategy, leadership, environmental aspects and the value chain, environmental performance indicators, evaluation, communication and environmental design. The first two groups bring substantial change in the nature of ISO 14001, demanding that companies address their EMS on a strategic level as well as previously on an operational level. This will mean a considerable change on the EMS of most companies. The CD1 also places greater demands on the top management, with the need to understand the organisation and its context, and to take the environmental performance into the general strategic planning of the company. The other five groups can be seen as more of an extension of the former requirements of the ISO 14001 standard. Some of them will still however bring substantial change for companies, such as the need to add the value chain in the evaluation of environmental aspects. These seven groups formed a framework, which was used for gap analysis of the EMS of two Swedish companies, Nolato Gota and Haldex Landskrona. The two companies researched here are in the forefront of the corporate sustainability field. The resulting gap between the EMS of the companies and the CD1, identified in the gap analysis, revealed that the companies need to make a number of changes and updates in their ISO 14001 to meet the new demands as proposed in the CD1. Other companies than Nolato and Haldex, that are less mature in the implementation of ISO standards and other voluntary sustainability guidelines and initiatives, will most likely need to change their EMS more fundamentally.