Understanding and Evaluating Environmental Impacts: A Guide to Identifying Significant Aspects in Your ISO 14001 EMS
Introduction
Evaluating environmental impacts and identifying significant environmental aspects are critical steps in building an effective Environmental Management System (EMS). By understanding how your organization’s activities, products, and services affect the environment, you can prioritize actions to minimize risks and enhance sustainability. This blog explores practical approaches to assessing environmental impacts, determining significance, and implementing controls to ensure compliance and continual improvement. Learn how to align your EMS with ISO 14001 standards and drive meaningful environmental performance. For expert guidance and ISO certification services, partner with Maxicert, one of the best ISO consultants dedicated to helping organizations build a strong, compliant EMS.
Understanding environmental impacts
An understanding of an organization’s environmental impacts related to identified environmental aspects is necessary when determining significance, especially those aspects that can lead to emergency situations. Many approaches are available. The organization should choose one that suits its needs.
Readily available information on the types of environmental impacts associated with the organization’s environmental aspects can be adequate for some organizations. Other organizations can choose to use cause-and-effect diagrams or flowcharts illustrating inputs. outputs or mass/energy balances or other approaches, such as environmental impact assessments or life cycle assessments.
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The approach chosen should be capable of recognizing:
- Positive (beneficial) environmental impacts, as well as negative (adverse) environmental impacts.
- Actual and potential environmental impacts.
- The part(s) of the environment that can be affected, such as air, water, soil, flora, fauna or cultural heritage.
- The characteristics of the location that can affect the magnitude of the environmental impact, such as local weather conditions, height of water table, soil types, etc.
- The nature of the changes to the environment (such as global versus local issues, length of time for which the impact occurs or potential for the impact to accumulate in strength over time).
Possible information sources for determining environmental aspects and environmental Impacts
Possible information sources include:
- General information documents, such as brochures, catalogues and annual reports.
- Operations manuals, process flowcharts or quality and product plans.
- Reports from previous audits, assessments or reviews, such as initial environmental reviews or life cycle assessments.
- Information from other management systems, such as quality or occupational health and safety.
- Technical data reports, published analyses or studies or lists of toxic substances.
- Compliance obligations.
- Codes of practice, national and international policies, guidelines and programmes.
- Procurement data.
- Product specifications, product development data, Safety Data Sheets (SDS/MSDS) or energy and material balance data.
- Waste inventories.
- Monitoring data.
- Environmental permit or license applications.
- Views of, requests from, or agreements with interested parties.
- Reports on emergency situations.
Determining significant environmental aspects
Significance is a concept that is relative to an organization and its context. What is significant for one organization is not necessarily significant for another. Evaluating significance can involve both technical analysis and judgment, as determined by the organization. The use of criteria can help the organization establish which environmental aspects and associated impacts it considers significant. Establishing and applying such criteria should provide consistency in the assessment of significance.
Since the organization can have many environmental aspects and associated impacts, it should establish criteria and a method to determine those that it considers significant. Criteria can relate to the environmental aspect (e.g., type, size, frequency) or the environmental impact (e.g. scale, severity, duration, exposure). Other inputs may also be considered when establishing significance criteria, including information on compliance obligations and the concerns of internal and external interested parties. However, the selection of these criteria should not be done in a way that downgrades an environmental aspect that is significant.
The organization can set levels (or values) of significance to be associated with each criterion. For example, the evaluation of significance could be based on a combination of the likelihood (probability/frequency) of an occurrence and its consequences (severity/intensity). Some type of scale or ranking can be helpful in assigning significance, for example, quantitatively in terms of a numeric value or qualitatively in terms of levels, such as high, medium, low or negligible.
The organization can find it useful to evaluate the significance of an environmental aspect and associated impacts by combining results from the criteria. It should decide which environmental aspects are significant, e.g., by using a threshold value. However, if such an approach is applied, the organization should be able to justify the threshold value.
Significant environmental aspects can result in risks and opportunities that need to be addressed to ensure that the organization can achieve the intended outcomes of its environmental management system and prevent or reduce undesired effects.
To facilitate planning, the organization should maintain appropriate documented information on the environmental aspects and associated impacts identified, the criteria used to determine its significant environmental aspects and those determined significant, including those that can occur in potential emergency situations.
The organization should use this information to understand the need for and to determine operational controls, including those necessary to mitigate or respond to actual emergency situations. Information on identified impacts should be included, as appropriate.
This information should be reviewed and updated periodically, and when circumstances change, it should be ensured that the information is up to date. It can be helpful to maintain this information in a list, register, database, or other form.
Conclusion
Identifying and assessing environmental impacts is crucial for building an effective Environmental Management System (EMS). Organizations should use structured criteria to determine significant environmental aspects, ensuring compliance, risk management, and continual improvement. By maintaining updated records and implementing appropriate controls, businesses can enhance sustainability and minimize environmental risks. For expert support in aligning your EMS with ISO 14001 standards, trust Maxicert—a leading name among the best ISO consultants offering professional ISO certification services tailored to your environmental goals.
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FAQ
How do organizations determine significant environmental aspects?
Organizations use criteria such as frequency, severity, duration and compliance obligations to evaluate and rank environmental aspects.
Why is it important to assess both actual and potential environmental impacts?
- Understanding both helps in proactive risk management, emergency preparedness and minimizing long-term environmental consequences.
How often should organizations review their environmental impact assessments?
Regularly, or when significant changes occur in operations, regulations or environmental conditions.
