Standards
Enormous economic and population growth worldwide in the second half of the twentieth century aggravated the factors that threaten health and the world — ozone depletion, climate change, depletion, fouling of natural resources, and extensive loss of biodiversity and habitat. In the past, the standard approaches to environmental problems generated by business and industry have been regulatory-driven "end-of-the-pipe" remediation efforts. In the 1990s, efforts by governments, NGOs, corporations, and investors began to grow substantially to develop awareness and plans for investment in business sustainability.
One critical milestone was the establishment of the ISO 14000 standards whose development came as a result of the Rio Summit on the Environment held in 1992. ISO 14001 is the cornerstone standard of the ISO 14000 series. It specifies a framework of control for an Environmental Management System against which an organization can be certified by a third party. Other ISO 14000 Series Standards are actually guidelines, many to help you achieve registration to ISO 14001. They include the following:
- ISO 14004 provides guidance on the development and implementation of environmental management systems
- ISO 14010 provides general principles of environmental auditing (now superseded by ISO 19011)
- ISO 14011 provides specific guidance on audit an environmental management system (now superseded by ISO 19011)
- ISO 14012 provides guidance on qualification criteria for environmental auditors and lead auditors (now superseded by ISO 19011)
- ISO 14013/5 provides audit program review and assessment material.
- ISO 14020+ labeling issues
- ISO 14030+ provides guidance on performance targets and monitoring within an Environmental Management System
- ISO 14040+ covers life cycle issues
Read more about this topic: Sustainable Business
Famous quotes containing the word standards:
“In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens, a substantial part of its whole population, who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life. I see one third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“The things a man has to have are hope and confidence in himself against odds, and sometimes he needs somebody, his pal or his mother or his wife or God, to give him that confidence. He’s got to have some inner standards worth fighting for or there won’t be any way to bring him into conflict. And he must be ready to choose death before dishonor without making too much song and dance about it. That’s all there is to it.”
—Clark Gable (1901–1960)
“In full view of his television audience, he preached a new religion—or a new form of Christianity—based on faith in financial miracles and in a Heaven here on earth with a water slide and luxury hotels. It was a religion of celebrity and showmanship and fun, which made a mockery of all puritanical standards and all canons of good taste. Its standard was excess, and its doctrines were tolerance and freedom from accountability.”
—New Yorker (April 23, 1990)