Environmental Aspects (ISO 14001:2004, §4.3.1)

The requirement of §4.3.1 of ISO 14001 is to establish and maintain procedures 1) for identifying theenvironmental aspects of the organization’s activities, products, and services that it can control and those that it can influence and 2) for determining which of those aspects have or can have a significant impact on the environment. Understanding the requirement of this element of ISO 14001 is central to understanding the concept of an environmental management system.A single manufacturing facility has potentially hundreds of environmental aspects. How far must it go in identifying its environmental aspects to satisfy the terms of the requirement? ISO 14001 specifies that the organization is to identify those aspects that it can control and those that it can influence and that it must also take into account planned or new developments and new or modified activities, products, and services. These stipulations in the requirements, without actually drawing boundaries on how far the organization must go in identifyingenvironmental aspects, at least establish some categories of aspect that must be considered. Beyond this principle, each organization must identify its aspects comprehensively enough so as to not fail to identify a significant aspect or a legal requirement. An objection to comprehensive identification of aspects is that the organization may become so immersed in aspects identification that it loses sight of the end objective of the procedure, which is to determine significance.“Significant impact” is not a stand-alone term in §4.3.1. It is accompanied by the phrase “impact on the environment” and “environment” is a defined term. Significant aspects, then, are those environmental aspects that have or can have significant impacts on air, water, land, natural resources, flora, fauna, and humans. The organization determines, using its own criteria, what magnitude of impact on these seven environmental receptors constitutes a significant impact. Whether an aspect is regulated is not intended to be a factor in determining significance.Proper execution of the environmental aspects procedure is important, in part, because it lifts environmental management out of the regulatory compliance mode and into the mode ofsystematically consequences for the environment, irrespective of regulation. The organization that rigorously applies the environmental aspects procedure discovers many opportunities to improve environmental performance that regulation does not address, including:

· Use of energy· Consumption of materials· Environmental impacts of employee activities

· Environmental impacts of products and by-products post-manufacture, including distribution, use, reuse, and disposal

· Environmental impacts of services

· Unregulated waste streams such as carbon dioxide