For many industries, pressure is now being exerted by many organizations and customers, who expect their suppliers to adopt environmentally-friendly practices, and may mandate ISO 14001 certification as a licence to operate.ISO 14001: 2004 is an environmental management standard (EMS). It specifies a set of environmental management requirements for environmental management systems. The purpose of this standard is to help all types of organizations to protect the environment, to prevent pollution, and to improve their environmental performance.One of the keys to a successful registration for conformance with ISO 14001 is to accurately determine the organization's Environmental Aspects, arrive at which are the most significant and therefore require the most attention. The element of the standard 4.3.1 Environmental Aspects requires a procedure to identify environmental aspects and related impacts that the organization can control or have influence over, and determine those which are significant. The intent of this element is to help the organization identify how it affects the environment, prioritize aspects, and use the EMS to manage, control, and improve upon the aspects. So the organization must ensure that the significant aspects are taken into account in the EMS. ISO 14001 does not prescribe what aspects should be significant, or even how to determine significance. However, it is expected that a consistent and verifiable process is used to determine significance.The purpose of this article is to show how organizations can define their aspects and determine significance by using a flowchart diagram method. The practical use of this method will be shown on example of company Economic d.o.o. Vitez.
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Primary Language | English |
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Subjects | Engineering |
Journal Section | Articles |
Authors | |
Publication Date | April 1, 2013 |
Submission Date | November 14, 2015 |
Published in Issue | Year 2013 Volume: 1 Issue: 1 |