Toolkit makes ISO14001 accessible to small businesses

The toolkit is a version of the EMS Easy tool developed in Belgium by Heinz Werner Engel, customised for the UK market by south west-based environmental consultancy firm, Global Action Plan.

The idea behind EMS Easy is that it  simplifies the process of certification by replacing a paper-based approach to managing environmental performance, with something more visual and intuitive which takes as its starting-point ‘what is happening on the ground’.

Global Action Plan claims that the entire management system documentation is a tenth of that of any other system.

Apart from Cornwall-based Leap Media, four of Global Action Plan’s clients have achieved ISO14001 using the toolkit in the past year – none of them employing more than 50 staff – dispelling the myth that environmental management standards are the sole preserve of large organisations.

In fact, Thomas Store, senior sustainable business consultant and team leader believes that, it is actually easier for small businesses to achieve ISO14001: “At the end of the day, their operations are simpler, there is less bureaucracy, less management levels, less hierarchy, less employees to get on board.”

It is perhaps for this reason that Global Action Plan is able to claim that EMS Easy typically takes four to nine months to implement, compared with the usual 15 to 18 months.

Store’s opinion is no business is too small to achieve ISO14001. He says he has one client who runs a website-based company from her bedroom who, he believes, will start the process later this year.

The benefits small businesses can achieve by implementing an environmental management system certified under ISO14001 are demonstrated by Barnstable-based Line-X Protective Coatings, which was the first company in the UK to achieve certification using EMS Easy.

As well as achieving ISO14001, the company – which employs just five people – has reduced its mains water usage by more than 50 per cent, reduced its electricity usage by 30 per cent, saved 10,000 vehicle miles with an associated 12 tonne reduction in CO2 emissions, and now exceeds legislative standards in pollution prevention and maintenance procedures.

Global Action Plan is not the only provider of EMS Easy in the UK, although it claims to have signed up more clients than any other company (35 so far) and has recently been approved as the trainer organisation for the toolkit in the UK.

Across Europe, many small businesses have used EMS Easy to achieve European EMAS and international ISO14001 for their environmental management systems.