Identifying, Rating and Measuring Environmental Aspects for ISO 14000 Registration: An Approach That Works.
Aichelmann, Richard (Axcelis Technology, Inc. )
The ISO 14000 standard requires that an organization “establish and maintain (a) procedure(s) to identify the environmental aspects of its activities, products or services that it can control and over which it can be expected to have an influence, in order to determine those which have or can have significant impacts on the environment.” In this paper the author will present proven techniques for identifying and rating the significance of the impacts of an organization’s environmental aspects. The methods presented are ones actually employed by organizations that successfully implemented Environmental Management Systems that achieved registration to the ISO 14001 standard. Emphasis will be placed on procedures that are extremely simple to implement. Finally, examples of some approaches for monitoring and measuring improvements of the significant impacts will be briefly discussed.