MANAGEMENT & PROTECTION SYSTEMS

There are three key concepts introduced by ISO 14001 of 2015, whose understanding and interpretation are fundamental for the correct application of the standard as a whole:

The first concept leads to the introduction of a standard point entirely dedicated to the Context of the organization and to its knowledge and understanding by the organization that intends to adopt and develop an Environmental Management System.
The formalization of a "context analysis" of the organization stems from the desire to enhance the contribution and to strengthen the role of the Environmental Management System as a management tool within the broader issues of sustainable development (therefore also social and economic in nature ), recognizing the need, for the purposes of its effectiveness, that it takes into adequate consideration the overall context in which the organization operates, as well as the expectations and needs of the various interested parties that are active in the same context and with which it, to different levels and with different purposes, interacts (operators of upstream and downstream supply chains, competing companies, community loc wings, institutions, etc.).

The context introduced by ISO 14001: 2015 is not only "environmental" in a physical and natural sense, but "populated" with subjects (interested parties) with specific needs and expectations. , as well as more generally of the issues that may emerge from the context in relation to the highlighted dimensions, that context analysis is primarily aimed at.

The consideration of the Life Cycle Perspective in the environmental management of products and services and, more generally, in the environmental management of companies and of the complex of relations with the interlocutors of their own supply chains, is one of the most innovative topics.

The Life Cycle is in fact referred to as a fundamental conceptual and methodological approach for the development of the EMS, which in fact asks the company to consider, in a unitary vision and logic, all the environmental impacts connected to its products / services along all the phases of their life, as well as to evaluate and correctly manage the processes and activities from which they are caused.

The new rule explicitly excludes that the conduct of an LCA can be considered a requirement. The need to adopt a Life Cycle Perspective can instead be taken as a starting point to develop this tool, whose use has remained until now almost always limited to the environmental management of the product16.
In light of the new requirements, the LCA finds new and significant possibilities for integration and enhancement within an EMS, to become the ideal tool to provide the organization with the knowledge required not only to manage the environmental impacts of the products, but also to concretely pursue the continuous improvement of the environmental performance that is the basis of the philosophy of the standard.

The third key aspect is related to the introduction of the Risk theme, whose identification, evaluation and management now becomes an integral part of the Environmental Management System. This innovation also arises, among other things, from the desire to articulate the standard based on the new High Level Structure introduced for all the ISO standards relating to management systems.
Based on this structure, in fact, the identification and the assessment of the risks connected to a given management system is a fundamental prerequisite for being able to correctly plan the planning and to be able to define, consequently, effective actions in terms of both prevention and mitigation.

With specific reference to the Environmental Management System, the integration of the concept of risk contributes to responding to the need to further integrate the EMS with the business and with the company's strategic guidelines and thus to overcome one of the main limits of which Environmental Management Systems have often suffered: that of the lack of or insufficient integration not only in the operations of the company, but also and above all in the definition of its strategies at the highest levels of decision-making processes.

The concept of risk does not only refer to potential negative consequences, or in any case undesirable ones, but tends to widen, recognizing how a given event may be associated with a plurality of impacts, both negative and positive. In this logic, companies are therefore called upon to adopt and develop, in their EMS, approaches to risk management aimed not only at preventing and mitigating the potential negative consequences for achieving their objectives, but also at seizing and exploiting the opportunities that a correct and effective environmental management can offer in a logic of integration with the company business.