At S & J Auditing & Consulting, we’ve supported organisations across virtually all industries in attaining ISO Certification. Across our varied experience, we’ve also found that most business owners and managers have the same questions when it comes to the earlier phases of their Certification journey.
Amongst the most common questions we’re asked is ‘what ISO Standards are most suitable for my business?’. Whilst most of our clients have sought Certification to ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management Systems, we’re also seeing more business owners investing in tailored Environmental Management Systems and seeking compliance to ISO 14001:2015.
Environmental Management Systems can provide dynamic operational benefits for enterprises across a wide variety of industries in Australia, from hospitality to mining, manufacturing, and even the telecommunications sector.
If you’re considering securing ISO 14001:2015 Certification for your business but want to learn more about how this Certification may benefit your industry, let our team at S & J Auditing & Consulting provide some expert insights.
What is ISO 14001:2015 – Environmental Management Systems?
ISO 14001:2015 is the Certification Standard that relates to the development, implementation, and maintenance of Environmental Management Systems (or EMS). The wider ISO 14000 Family of Standards also supports the EMS frameworks outlined in ISO 14001:2015.
EMS Systems are used to monitor an organisation’s overall environmental impact across all of their operational processes and procedures. By providing a systemic approach to environmental performance monitoring and improvement strategising, the ISO 14001:2015 frameworks provide organisations with the structure and methodologies they need to maintain consistently sustainable business practices.
Understanding the Benefits of ISO 14001:2015 Certification
Maintaining ISO 14001:2015 Certification provides a variety of environmental and economic benefits for your business, including:
- Improved environmental performance
- Improved cost-efficiency
- Improved industry reputation
- Improved stakeholder and consumer trust
- Reduced workplace hazards
- Improved workplace culture
- More confidence to achieve regulatory compliance
- Improved access to high-profile tender contracts
Learn more about these benefits for ISO 14001:2015 Certification in this guide.
15 Industries that Can Benefit from ISO 14001:2015 Certification
With more industries investing in emissions monitoring, developing environmental policies, and seeking sustainable practice accreditations, ISO 14001:2015 Certification acts as a potent trust signal for all organisations that are looking to secure ethical partnerships and establish their brand as eco-conscious and thus, future-oriented.
Here are just some of the Australian industries where ISO 14001:2015 Certification can provide strong commercial and reputational benefits.
Accommodation and Tourism
Tourism enterprises like hotels and other hospitality businesses typically have higher than average waste production trends when compared to other industries. Everything from commercial laundry habits for linens and towels to electricity emissions, food waste, and emissions from supplier transportation activities can affect the carbon footprint for accommodation and tourism enterprises.
With ISO 14001:2015 Certification, you can present your tourism enterprise as a sustainable operator in an industry where higher waste production is a constant concern. Australia’s growing ecotourism industry also provides strong opportunities for accommodation and tourism enterprises who want to appeal to eco-conscious travellers.
Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing
From droughts to increasingly volatile climatic conditions, Australia’s agricultural sector has responded to countless challenges over the past few decades. Growing calls for more sustainable farming, forestry, and fishing practices has also prompted many agribusinesses nationwide to invest in EMS solutions for their enterprises.
With tailored EMS solutions, agricultural sector enterprises can better monitor and optimise all of their sustainability metrics, from water usage and other resource consumption rates to crop yields, ecological footprint monitoring, and even indirect emissions contributors like supplier transportation emissions.
Construction and Engineering
The construction and civil engineering sector in Australia has always had unique waste management requirements, as most construction waste can easily be repurposed or recycled. Poor waste management and other operational processes can also lead to construction and engineering enterprises maintaining a poor ecological footprint, with worksites being left with environmental issues and hazards like soil compaction, erosion, and degradation.
Our team at S & J Auditing & Consulting have worked extensively with local construction and engineering companies like Capstone Construction to develop and implement sustainable waste management, carbon monitoring, and other environmental management procedures that are expressly designed to optimise construction and engineering enterprises.
Education and Training
For educational institutions, investing in ISO 14001:2015 Certification supports energy monitoring for buildings and facilities across campuses, and qualifying for sustainable partnerships with and collaboration opportunities with other local and/or international institutions (i.e. sister schools, training hospitals and other facilities, etc.).
ISO 14001:2015 Certification also aids in cultivating a culture of continuous improvements using the PDCA Cycle, which can aid education sector enterprises in better managing staff turnover rates and boosting job satisfaction rates. These foundational improvements can in turn, strengthen the reputation and public image of learning institutions, which can prompt greater student admission and course completion rates.
Electricity, Gas, Water and Waste Services
Energy and waste management services typically manage large industrial facilities with specialised equipment and machinery. As a result, these industries must meet intensive requirements to ensure regulatory compliance, including environmental impact monitoring and risk assessment and management procedures for correcting environmental hazards and events that may result in extensive ecological damage (e.g. chemical waste spills, water contamination, chemical reactions that may result in fires, explosions, etc.).
Our team at S & J Auditing & Consulting have provided tailored ISO 14001 support for electricity, gas, water and waste service providers across Perth, including WA Recycling. By securing ISO 14001:2015 Certification, enterprises in this sector can not only maintain regulatory compliance, but are also better positioned to reduce their ecological footprint, optimise resource consumption, boost their output, and maintain cleaner, greener operations.
Financial and Insurance Services
For banks, lenders, and insurance services, ISO 14001:2015 Certification provides a competitive advantage that sways consumer interests in their favour. Maintaining sustainable values can encourage socially conscious consumers to utilise their financial services over local competitors, ensuring that financial and insurance service providers with ISO 14001:2015 Certification can maintain enough investment capital to:
- grow their operations,
- secure partnerships with other industry players, and
- develop and rollout new financial products for their customer base (i.e. improved savings accounts, customer loyalty programs, and policy extras that ensure their insurance policies can provide dynamic value).
Health Care and Social Assistance
For Australia’s health care sector, ethical disposal of medical waste and hazardous chemicals is an evergreen concern. Thankfully, Certification to ISO 14001:2015 provides health care enterprises with the frameworks they need to maintain sustainable waste disposal processes as well as develop other sustainability initiatives that optimise resource consumption, energy efficiency across facilities, and support healthcare organisations in maintaining industry regulatory compliance.
We’ve provided tailored ISO consultancy services to a wide range of health care and social assistance enterprises, including 4Healthcare here in Perth.
Information Media and Telecommunications
With the ecological impact of data centres and telecommunications networks being a hot topic issue today, more Australian information media and telecommunications enterprises are investing in EMS solutions to maintain a proactive approach to their environmental performance monitoring.
With Certification to ISO 14001:2015, information media and telecommunications enterprises can implement focused environmental performance monitoring processes to better report their scope 1, 2, and 3 direct and indirect emissions, alongside evaluating their overall environmental and ecological impact with improved accuracy.
Manufacturing
Like electricity, gas, water and waste service providers, manufacturing and fabrication facilities also utilise heavy-duty equipment and machinery on-site. Manufacturing enterprises also produce transportation emissions from freight shipping during the import/export of raw materials, as well as from the distribution of their processed products.
For this reason, manufacturers can greatly benefit from maintaining ISO 14001:2015 Certification to support sustainable optimisation of their on-site operations as well as their supply chain. Securing ISO 14001:2015 Certification may also open up opportunities for manufacturers to partner with certified green suppliers, helping them to potentially establish closed loop production processes and keep their carbon footprint to a minimum across their entire production life cycle.
Mining
Mineral extraction processes that fail to consider ecological impacts of their activities can quickly lead to largescale environmental degradation. Using the environmental monitoring frameworks outlined in ISO 14001:2015, mining corporations can implement future-ready environmental performance procedures, including emissions reporting across worksites, machinery, and fleet vehicles, and ecological impact assessments that ensure minimal disruptions to worksites and surrounding ecosystems prior to, during, and after mining activities.
Professional, Scientific and Technical Services
For pharmaceutical and testing and calibration laboratories, maintaining ISO Certification can support enterprises in attaining higher-profile tender contracts, supporting commercial activities as well as ensuring laboratory facilities are in the strongest possible position to gain public and private funding.
Our ISO consultants have supported Australian laboratory facilities in attaining ISO 14001:2015 Certification as well as other industry-specific accreditations like ISO 17025 for testing and calibration facilities, and ISO 17034 for quality assurance relating to reference materials.
Public Administration
For governmental agencies, public scrutiny and reputation management are an ongoing concern. This is why government agencies typically maintain a proactive approach to securing and maintaining ISO Certification, including Certification to ISO 14001:2015.
By demonstrating a commitment to environmental performance monitoring, government agencies can not only maintain a stronger reputation and nurture stakeholder confidence, but also ensure they’re well-positioned to receive state and/or federal funding and enjoy improved autonomy with greenlighting innovation projects.
Retail Trade
Retail and consumer waste is still amongst the largest landfill contributors in Australia, which has resulted in environmental advocates calling for sustainable initiatives across Australia’s major retail corporations. Thankfully, the ISO 14001:2015 Standard provides retailers with frameworks that support improved business waste management.
In implementing these frameworks, retail sector enterprises can not only monitor their environmental performance, but also work towards maintaining circular or closed loop production practices, where retail signage materials, packaging, and other essentials can potentially be reused and recycled to further minimise industry waste.
Transport, Postal and Warehousing
Similar to retail trade, the key drivers of carbon emissions in transport, postal, and warehousing facilities are generated by packaging waste and freight/supply chain emissions. And as eCommerce and online shopping become a fixture of consumer activities in the digital age, now is the perfect time for transport, postal, and warehousing facilities to invest in their environmental performance monitoring.
This makes the transport and postage sector one of the foremost industries that can benefit from ISO 14001:2015 Certification. By implementing a tailored EMS for your transport, postal, or warehousing enterprise today, you can ensure your organisation is more likely to be considered as a trade and logistics partner to Australia’s rapidly expanding network of eCommerce business owners.
Wholesale Trade
Like transport, postal and warehousing or third party logistics enterprises, wholesale trade enterprises thrive by building trade partnerships with local and international business owners. By investing in their environmental practices and securing ISO 14001:2015 Certification as a globally recognised trust signal, wholesale trade enterprises can ensure they’re well-positioned to secure supply partnerships with domestic and international business owners, helping them establish a network of business contacts and consolidate their position as a key player in the globalising wholesale sector.
Secure ISO 14001:2015 Certification for your Organisation with S&J Auditing & Consulting
With decades of combined experience and an extensive portfolio of case studies, our team at S & J Auditing & Consulting possess all the relevant ISO knowledge and experience to develop EMS solutions that are tailored to your industry as well as to your unique business goals.
Our familiarity with the frameworks and guidelines outlined in ISO 14001:2015 also position our ISO consultants in providing custom solutions that grow with your enterprise, ensuring you can invest in an EMS that takes you from strength to strength.
We’re also proud to offer our clients with valuable ISO resources, like our ISO 14001 checklist, and documentation guidelines to support their Certification preparedness alongside providing structure for ongoing internal audit schedules.
If you’d like to learn more about how S & J Auditing & Consulting can support your enterprise in securing ISO 14001:2015 Certification, simply get in touch via our website or by calling 0409 933 447 today.
