ISO 14000
ISO 14000 exists to ensure a product has the lowest possible environmental impact. ISO 14000 is similar to ISO 9000 in that both pertain to the process of how a product is produced, rather than to the product itself.
The basis of ISO 14000 was the US Environmental Protection Agency's pioneering use of pathway analysis to determine the likely human health impact of environmental ills, combined with the Natural Step definitions.
The material included in this family of specifications is very broad. The major parts of ISO 14000 are:
- ISO 14001 and ISO 14004: the initial standards, which introduce the idea of Environmental Management Systems. An environmental management system makes possible a structured approach to setting environmental objectives and targets. Essentially, an organization may apply these broad conceptual tools to their own processes.
These two prime structures have been largely extended and more or less superseded by the following:
- ISO 14040 discusses pre-production planning and environment goal setting.
- ISO 14020 covers labels and declarations.
- ISO 14030 discusses post-production environmental assesment.
- ISO 14062 discusses making improvements to environmental impact goals.
- ISO 14063 is an addendum to 14020, discussing further communications on environmental impact.
- ISO 14011 concerns meta-evaluation — how to tell if your intended regulatory tools worked.
As with ISO 9000, certification is performed by third-party organisations rather than being awarded by ISO directly.
