The International Organization for Standardization ISO has released a new standard of the ISO14000 family, which is intended to help certain organizations reduce the negative impact of their products and services on the environment.
All products or services will have an impact on the environment throughout their life cycle, from resource extraction to end of processing. The purpose of environmentally friendly design is to take environmental factors into consideration during product development and service processes to reduce environmental harm and continuously improve its life cycle performance. The end goal: cleaner products and services, and a greener planet.
The latest release of ISO 14006:2011, Environmental Management System - Added Environmental Design Guidelines (Environmental management systems – Guidelines for incorporating ecodesign), providing management system guidance for products and services on how to integrate environmentally friendly design into environment, quality, etc.
This standard will help relevant organizations establish, prove, implement, and continuously improve ecological management in environmental management systems (EMS). It applies when an organization has control over a product or environmental factors that affect the product/service.
Advantages of incorporating environmentally friendly design:
1. Economic benefits, such as increasing competitiveness, reducing costs, attracting financing and investment, and improving efficiency;
2. Promote innovation and creativity and establish new business models;
3. Reduce environmental impact and improve product knowledge thereby reducing liability;
4. Improve the organizational image;
5. Improve employee motivation.
Martin Charter, convener of the working group that developed ISO14006, said: “The new standards have been developed to help all organizations implement eco-design in a flexible and feasible way. The aim is that organizations can use these guidelines to design and develop More advanced, more profitable and more sustainable products and services.”
ISO 14006:2011 applies to any organization, regardless of size, location, culture or complexity of its management systems, and regardless of the simplicity or complexity of the products or services.
The new standard ISO14006:2011 is mainly used by organizations that have established and implemented an environmental management system (EMS) in accordance with the ISO 14001 standard, regardless of whether the organization has implemented an ISO 9001 quality management system (QMS). Secondly, it can also be used by organizations that have not yet formally established and operated an EMS or QMS, but are interested in reducing the adverse impact of their products or services on the environment.
Source: ISO (PIDC compilation)
