ISO 14001 - A Success Story

This international standard is designed to help companies reduce their negative impact on the environment – it worked for us. Following the guidelines of the standard not only publicly demonstrates our environmental commitment but it has really helped us to see rewarding results. Early in the history of our company, Peter De Haan challenged us to put environmental issues high on our corporate agenda. Like everyone else, we knew we should be turning lights off at the end of the day, recycling and making sure our waste was removed by licensed contractors, but it took the creation of a formal Environmental Management System to roll this out across the company in a structured way.

We used a local consultant to interpret the requirements of the standard and together we created a system which has now evolved into a robust management tool. Gill Rees was appointed as our Environmental Manager and completed a training course gaining a CIEH certificate in Environmental Management. We engaged LRQA, who audit our Quality Management System, and their Auditors recommended our approval in May 2006. Since then we have been subject to regular surveillance audits and one lengthier certificate renewal and are pleased to say we have always able to demonstrate continual improvement.

Writing an environmental policy may seem easy – you can promise to save the earth – but it must be attainable and sustainable. The ISO14001 standard uses the words “appropriate”, “commitment” and “communicated”. Our policy and our environmental management are “appropriate to the nature, scale and environmental impacts of our activities, products and services”.

Sustainable development - Meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

Our environmental performance can be demonstrated by reviewing a few clauses of the standard:

Aspects and Impacts

Cause and Effect

The standard asks us to identify aspects, determine the impact and document the information. One of the important documents in our system is the Register of Aspects in which we list the business process steps and identify the activity involved. Alongside each activity we have identified the environmental aspect and the resultant impact with an indication of significance. The standard does not define how a company should evaluate significance, however our main criteria is whether or not the aspect is controlled by legislation and, equally important, the magnitude of any potential environmental harm. We also factor in whether or not there may be concern from our clients and/or neighbours. Financial implications are included in the evaluation and can have either a negative or positive affect on the final score. Our most significant impacts are the waste we generate and the energy we use. Whilst these are adverse impacts our waste management procedure and energy saving campaigns have a beneficial impact on our overall performance.

Some impacts are indirect as in the case of transport activities and vehicle emissions. Whilst we have no company vehicles we monitor both business and employee travel and promote the use of public transport and car sharing for both. Our sites are well served by public transport and employees can obtain service information from our Environmental Manager or HR Department. We use video-conferencing between sites to reduce business mileage.

Legal and Other Requirements

Statutes, licences, leases and all that stuff

• Environmental Aspects are those activities, products or services that can interact with the environment.
• An Environmental Impact may be adverse or beneficial resulting from an organisation’s environmental aspects.

One of the shortest clauses within the standard, but the most important. We were grateful to the environmental guru we initially consulted for his help in wading through all the Acts, Regulations and their amendments to determine what applied to us. We documented all this in a Register of Legislation which is updated on an ad hoc basis with full reviews carried out twice per year. We get advance notice of new legislation directly from sources such as the Environment Agency and, from the internal audits we carry out, can record our compliance.

Every business must comply with the Environmental Protection Act, in particular the Duty of Care with regard to waste management. As part of this our Register of Legislation contains details of all the waste contractors we deal with and tracks details of their licences and annual Waste Transfer Note expiry dates. This section of the Register of Legislation is checked monthly.

What are Other Requirements? For us this means the environmental clauses of our building leases – we quote those relevant and confirm how we comply. We also cross reference our FSC and PEFC Certification which is managed through our Quality Management System.

Competence, Training and Awareness

Education, information, interrogation

In addition to our Environmental Manager’s Environmental Management Certificate we make sure other employees are competent in what they are doing. For example our Facilities Manager is responsible for supervising waste management including collections of hazardous waste. Sean has received training in legislation relating to waste as well as other aspects of his role. He now understands what his responsibilities are with regard to maintenance of our air conditioning. For example, every time a service engineer or electrician comes to site he checks they are qualified to carry out the service they provide. This ensures we are not only complying with legislation but also ISO14001’s requirement to:

Ensure that any person performing tasks for the company or on its behalf have the potential to cause a significant environment impact are competent."

All new starters meet the Environmental Manager as part of their induction programme to learn about the company’s environmental procedures, policy and aspects specific to their role.

Operational Procedures

Singing from the same hymn sheet

We have a very comprehensive Quality Management System with processes and procedures covering each area of the business. However, there were certain environmental activities not specifically covered that touched all areas of the business. For example the Waste Management Procedure should be followed as part of every production procedure as well as by all office staff. Colour coding waste bins is a simple idea but if a red bin for cardboard is sometimes a red bin for paper there’s chaos, confusion and definitely no waste segregation.

Internal Audit

The not-so-secret police

To “determine whether the environmental management system conforms to planned arrangements” and “has been properly implemented” we have a team of trained Auditors working to an annual audit schedule. Adherence with ISO 14001 is carried out annually, usually by our Quality Manager who is our Lead Auditor. Being cynical it could be said that carrying out internal audits means we are policing ourselves. Audit reports are regularly reviewed by external auditors, perhaps prompting them to spot check some of the findings – we can’t pull the wool over their eyes!

The temptation to sanitise findings means we are only fooling ourselves. Internal audits are a useful tool for confirming that procedures are effective and identifying training needs as well as areas for improvement.

Management Review

It is good to talk

Every so often – “at planned intervals” – our Environmental Management Team meet to review activities of the business and agree ways to control and reduce our environmental impact. Our team includes Linda Scott and Evan Bath along with other members of the Operations Management Team. The meeting gives us the opportunity to review our past and future performance purely from an environmental point of view. We look at our EPIs (Environmental Performance Indicators), review current objectives and set new ones. We consider how changes to activities might have an environmental impact and conversely how pending legislation might impact on us. All in all it’s a good forum to ensure we are “consistent with the commitment to continual improvement”.

Measuring and monitoring

Not just reading the meter

In line with the standard our most significant aspects are measured on a monthly basis. Our waste contractors provide us with a report of the tonnage of each waste stream they collect. Our energy bills provide simple information on gas and electricity usage but we have taken this one step further.

To understand just how much energy is being used, or wasted, we use the half hourly data available on line from our electricity provider. This is really valuable data. It can focus the mind and raise such questions as what was burning electricity on Saturday night, Sunday morning or even Christmas Day. If you’re really clever you can relate usage to production output at specific times of the day, week or year. We relied on such data when we targeted reduction of energy wasted during weekend closedown. Over a year we measured a set period of 6pm Saturday to 6am Sunday, a time at which there is never any overtime working to skew the usage figures. Through improved close-down procedures, investment in aircon timers and other initiatives we achieved a reduction of 34% and a knock-on affect to annual usage. Annual figures for waste and energy give a baseline against which we target improvements. Monthly results are reported to the Board and Environmental Management Team.

Objectives, Targets and Programmes

Fix some goal posts

This really is putting your money where your mouth is – no greenwashing here. An objective programme must be SMART – specific, measurable, achievable and time-bound. When the Environmental Management Team have agreed a new objective we document all the SMART elements and agree responsibilities. We communicate objectives to all staff through our internal communication procedure in order that everyone is aware of what we are trying to achieve and encourage them to contribute to the success. Progress is monitored in the Environmental Manager’s monthly report to the Board.

The ISO standard does not specify how many Objective Programmes a company must have – we currently have two:

Objective

To identify and implement a replacement strategy for equipment containing obsolete Ozone Depleting Substances through assessment of conventional and alternative heating, cooling and ventilation technologies. Context for action: Our Leicester site has 6 air conditioning units containing R22 gas, an HCFC Ozone Depleting Substance. The IT server room uses two of these units together with others which struggle to maintain the low temperature required. Air conditioning is believed to account for the greatest proportion of our energy use.

Objective:

To assess the feasibility of reducing cardboard waste by returning packaging to stationery suppliers for re-use. Context for action: During the 12 month period August 2009 to July 2010 78 tonnes of cardboard waste was recycled - 48 tonnes at Leicester and 30 tonnes at Swindon. Cardboard waste is mainly generated from packaging in which production stationery is received. We would like to explore the opportunity of moving up the waste hierarchy and reducing waste by the re-use of packaging through it being returned to suppliers.

Previous Objective Programmes:

Reduction of carbon emissions - rather than subscribing to carbon neutral schemes, usually requiring offsetting. We included analysis and reduction of our business travel; and reduction of energy wasted during non-productive periods.

Reduction of energy usage - a further energy saving campaign had commitment from all departments of the business. The results saw a reduction in electricity and gas usage at both sites with the biggest success being the reduction of gas at Leicester site by over 24%.

Reduction of waste to landfill - this was an early objective which has gone on to see a reduction by over 80% since 2003 and our recycling rate rise to 98%

Reduce environmental impact caused by the use and disposal of plastics, aluminium cans and cleaning chemicals - although only a small volume of waste, we now recycle these non-operational waste streams.

Analyse and understand types, sources and volumes of waste paper and cardboard to identify reduction schemes with specific targets - moving up the waste hierarchy (from a 98% recycling rate) we wanted to know how it is generated in order to target reduction schemes. This has driven our current objective to re-use cardboard packaging. Our investment in a colour printer using continuous plain white paper will help reduce pre-print waste.

Bringing it all together

The benefit of each clause ie, each element of our EMS, is only realised when they are brought together:

• A risk assessment for each Environmental Aspect details relevant legislation, operational and emergency procedures and required competencies
• The Register of Legislation identifies relevant Aspects, potential receptors and our operational procedures to reduce risk of pollution
• Employee training covers aspects and legislation
• Audit results are recorded on the Register of Legislation