Setting Environmental Objectives for an ISO 14001 Environmental Management System (EMS)

Introduction

Objectives are defined in the Environmental Management System (EMS) standard ISO 14001:2015 as being ‘result to be achieved’. They form a key part of an organisation’s strategy to improve its environmental performance. They can be set at many different organisational levels, for a small project up to a multinational organisation and anything in between. Objectives take an organisation approach from identifying environmental problems to improving them. The terms ‘goals’, ‘targets’ or ‘action plans’ can now, at least when it comes to ISO 14001 as being objectives. 

Requirements of ISO 14001

Objectives are required to be set for compliance with sub clause 6.2 of ISO 14001:2015. It states that objectives must be documented, linked to the environmental policy, be measurable, monitored, communicated and reviewed and amended as necessary. 

A Framework for Developing Objectives

The standard does not provide much specific advice on what objectives should be set for stating that they should take into account significant environmental aspects and associated compliance obligations and consider risk and opportunities. We can set objectives almost for what we like but some kind of framework would be useful.

A good approach, which I have used with many clients when developing EMSs is to have at least one objective (sometimes more) for each significant environmental aspect and impact. This seems to make sense, as it aims at reducing large environmental issues which significantly impact environmental performance. 

Objective will also generally be linked to commitments within the environmental policy. For example, a very broad aim will be stated in a policy and more specific objective(s) could be developed from it, call them ‘macro’ objectives if you like. For example, there could be a broad policy aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and linked to it would be a series of objectives on how this is going to be achieved. Looking at the policy therefore will help ‘spin off’ at least a few environmental objectives. Be aware that a policy under the standard must provide a framework for setting objectives, so proving this link is important.

Now we have some relatively high level objectives, directly linked to policy aims. What next? A good approach might be to develop some more focused ‘micro’ objectives (sometimes referred to as targets). These would be linked to the high level objective but would generally be compliant with the requirements of the SMART acronym. There a different version of SMART but a common one is:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant, and
• Time bound.

Other potentials for micro objectives could be action plans. As a minimum, these are a series of tasks to be completed, in addition to a timescale and a person who is responsible for completing the task.

Tracking Objectives

A key requirement of objectives is that they are measurable. If you can’t track where you are while meeting the objective, then it is not suitable. Some form of environmental performance indicator/key performance indicator could be developed for each objective. A simple example would be if you are looking at reducing water consumption within an organisation then you could track M³ of water used by the organisation, which could be gained by meter readings.

Final Note

As we can see there are no hard and fast rules for setting objectives. However, a good approach might be to set them based on significant aspects and impacts and environmental policy aims. Objectives can be at various levels from ‘macro’ to ‘micro’. They should be able to be tracked and should be SMART. Just a few ideas on setting objectives from the experiences over the years!

John Binns BSc (Hons) MSc MIEMA is an experienced environmental tutor and consultant.