Role of environmental aspects in an ISO 14001 certified EMS

Environmental aspects are an essential part of an Environmental Management System certified to ISO 14001:2015.

Environmental aspects play a key role in determining risks and opportunities, compliance obligation, environmental objectives, and the development of improvement plans.

What is an environmental aspect and an environmental impact?

As defined in ISO 14001:2015, an environmental aspect is an “element of an organisation’s activities or products or services that interacts or can interact with the environment.”

Environmental aspects may cause one or more environmental impacts.

An environmental impact is a change to the natural or built environment, whether positive or negative, resulting from an environmental aspect.

For example, an environmental aspect could be producing waste water from manufacturing processes and an environmental impact could be water pollution and harm to wildlife.

What are significant environmental aspects?

Significant environmental aspects are aspects that “have or can have one or more significant environmental impacts.” “Significant” is not defined in ISO 14001; its definition is left to the discretion of the organisation being certified.

A “threshold of significance” is usually defined by the organisation in terms of the risk criteria (e.g. environmental aspects with a risk rating of “medium” or above may be deemed significant). Significant environmental aspects can also be determined purely by the “consequence” rating, acknowledging the degree of guesswork that is inevitably involved in assessing “likelihood”.

Identifying environmental aspects

An organisation is expected to determine all environmental aspects – direct and indirect. Direct environmental aspects are the ones the organisation can control or influence within the scope of their Environmental Management System (e.g. onsite pollution). Indirect environmental aspects are ones that the organisation has no control over, but does have influence (e.g. pollution from generation of the electricity it uses – this can be influenced by purchasing “green” electricity).

The level of control or influence an organisation can have on their environmental aspects will vary. Clause 6.1.2 of ISO 14001:2015 stipulates that it is up to the organisation to determine the extent of control it can exercise, what it can influence and the extent to which it chooses to influence.

Ensuring you have identified all the environmental aspects

Here are some items to check to ensure you have identified all your organisation’s environmental aspects:

• Storage and use of chemicals onsite and all possible sources of pollution
• Operation of facilities, major equipment, activity areas and plant processes
• Plant conditions including abnormal activity, turnaround, start up and shutdown
• Compliance obligations (these can point you to environmental aspects)
• Requirements of any site licences, permits and agreements
• Incident reports (and near misses)
• Needs and expectations of interested parties
• Upcoming new on-site developments, changes or major equipment purchases
• Any upcoming new/modified activities, products or services.

The life cycle perspective

Another important factor to consider as you identify environmental aspects is the life cycle perspective. Organisations need to look beyond their onsite environmental management and at the upstream and downstream processes related to their activities, products and services. This includes off-site activities such as the origin of raw materials, materials transportation and final disposal by their clients or consumers.

Read this blog for further detail on the life cycle perspective and how to implement one for your Environmental Management System.

Building a register of environmental aspects and impacts

ISO 14001 requires that an organisation build a register of all environmental aspects and corresponding environmental impacts. The Environmental Aspects and Impacts Register can be used in assessing risks and opportunities, determining environmental compliance obligations ,developing operational controls and deciding monitoring requirements.

For more information on how to define and structure your environmental aspects in your Environmental Aspects and Impacts Register and the information to include read my blog – What Makes a Good Environmental Aspects Register.

Keeping environmental aspects up-to-date

Regularly looking for new environmental aspects and impacts, and reviewing your environmental aspects (including significant aspects) and impacts, is another essential environmental management activity.

Changes to your aspects and impacts can, in turn, prompt:

• Development of new or improved operational controls
• Consideration of compliance obligations not previously applicable
• Development of new environmental objectives, targets or performance indicators
• Changes to emergency plans