International standards organisation ISO has published a handbook to help small and medium-sized businesses become certified to ISO 14001:2015.
The updated standard incorporates several new requirements such as a focus on the organisation’s context, risks and opportunities and high-level leadership.
Susan Briggs, who wrote the handbook, said: ‘To facilitate expanded uptake of this standard, it was important to demystify these concepts for small and medium-sized enterprises that are by far the most numerous organisations in most economies, particularly as many companies increasingly insist that ISO 14001 requirements are respected within the supply chain.’
The handbook contains technical expertise, tools, templates and lessons learned from putting the new requirements into practice, in recognition that implementing an environmental management system can be a real challenge for SMEs, who typically lack technical and financial resources and staff time.
‘The hope is to reduce the financial burden of hiring technical experts, but SMEs will still need to invest time,’ Briggs said.
