Environmental aspects according to ISO 14001

ISO 14001 is about reducing the negative environmental impact of your operations. It is fundamentally driven by identifying and managing your environmental aspects, i.e. the parts of your process that affect or can affect the environment. Successful implementation relies on a well-thought-out structure of identification, prioritisation and concrete control measures. The whole flow must then be integrated into your management system to drive continuous improvement.

What is an environmental aspect?

According to the ISO 14001 standard, an environmental aspect is the parts of an organization's activities, products or services that may interact with the environment. In other words, the environmental aspect describes the part of the organization's activities that can cause an environmental impact, while the environmental impact is the resulting change in the environment. Identifying the link between environmental aspects and their impacts provides management with a better basis for assessing risks, prioritizing actions and making strategic decisions.

For example, an emission from a chimney is an environmental aspect, while the deterioration of air quality is its impact.

Direct and indirect examples

When reviewing your activities, you need to distinguish between direct and indirect impacts. Direct environmental aspects are fully under your control in your own daily operations, such as the energy consumption of your premises, the handling of chemicals in production or the noise from your machinery. Even seemingly small administrative processes leave a footprint, such as the purchase of office supplies, IT equipment and emissions from company cars or travel.

An indirect environmental aspect is beyond your immediate control but can still be influenced by your business decisions. Modern environmental management requires a life-cycle approach where you look at the whole value chain. Some examples of indirect environmental aspects are how your subcontractors mine raw materials, how logistics companies transport your goods, or how the end customer recycles the product once it is used.

How to identify and assess your impacts

Identifying your environmental impacts starts with a detailed review of all your business processes. Systematically review what you buy, how it is produced and what happens to your products or services at the end, after delivery. During the audit, you are likely to identify hundreds of footprints, large and small. To make your environmental management manageable and resource-efficient, you need to assess the value of these and which ones you classify as significant environmental aspects.

The assessment is done using a scoring scale based on the size of the environmental impact, the frequency of the event, whether there are specific legal requirements and what your stakeholders expect from you. The events with the highest total score in your matrix are classified as significant environmental aspects. These priority areas should provide the framework for your environmental management, your objectives and your ISO 14001 environmental management system.

Environmental Aspect Register - for comprehensive documentation

An environmental aspect register is the backbone of your systematic environmental work. It is a documented basis that collects your identified environmental aspects. The register provides management with a clear overview and makes it possible to monitor results over time.

The register should contain a clear description of each aspect, its environmental impact and the results of your assessment. It should also be clear what your significant environmental aspects are and what actions you have linked to them. It is much easier to keep the information alive and updated through a digital platform, compared to working in static spreadsheets.

Examples of content

• Activity or process: Where in the business does the event occur?

• The aspect itself: What is the cause (for example, consumption of electricity, release of solvents or generation of hazardous waste)?

• Environmental impact: What will be the effect on the environment (for example, climate change or biodiversity loss)?

• Assessment and scoring: How did you determine whether it is significant or not, based on your methodology?

• Legal requirements and compliance: What environmental laws and local guidelines are linked to the aspect?

• Linked actions: What environmental objectives and action plans have you set up to manage the risk?

Integrating environmental management for continuous improvement

Simply creating a list is rarely enough to succeed in environmental management in the long term. To comply with ISO 14001, your environmental aspects register must be an integral part of your management system and daily flow. Every updated procedure, new environmental target and completed action should be linked in a natural and logical flow.

With long experience of digital business development, we at AM System know that environmental work must be alive to be useful. In our cloud-based platform, you link your significant environmental aspects directly to your environmental goals, daily routines and case management. When laws change, new machines are purchased or a deviation is reported, you update the register in the system and it is constantly kept alive. In Classic, it is easy to link the environmental objectives directly to your daily processes, which means that environmental work becomes a natural and value-creating part of the company's continuous development.