Environmental management is good business.

Extract

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Environmental management is good business.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Companies are increasingly investigating environmental management certification--either because their customers demand it or because it promises to offer opportunities for improvement. But what are the real benefits of ISO14001 certification? The authors draw from their experience in the Kentucky Pollution Prevention Center to detail benefits as well as implementation pointers.

Many firms began environmental management certification efforts in the mid-1990s due to increased global competition, customer awareness, and the potential benefits both in terms of bottom-line performance and operational efficiency, ISO 14001 certification represents a merger of two recent trends in the field of operations management that have shifted management attention from outcome to processes. The two trends are to have the critical processes for delivering quality products properly documented and widely understood and to have a sound environmental policy adhering to international standards.

Within the family of ISO 14000 certification standards, ISO 14001 specifies the structure of an environmental management information system--commonly called an environmental management system or EMS--which builds on and adds to existing environmental efforts such as regulatory compliance, training, records keeping, emergency planning, and prepar...

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