Environment

Environmental measures are high on the political agenda and up to now SMEs have been less involved as many exemptions existed. Today they get an ever increasing burden of such standards; ISO 14000 in its present format will have a heavy impact on the SME operation.

It concerns 23 million SMEs as environmental measures become gradually mandatory for all enterprises. With ISO 14001 (Environmental management systems) now fully in force and supported by CEN according to the Vienna agreement, we feel that SMEs need their own solution. As we explained to ISO before, ISO 14001 is for big organisations with multiple functions to follow implementation and maintenance in the organisations.

The European Commission proposed a mandate for a SME-specific guide to CEN. CEN refused this mandate and delegated the task to write a guideline to ISO. Currently the proposed standard is still at the drafting stage and requires many amendments in order to be of any relevance for small business. Our expert in ISO TC 207 (environmental management), Mr Arie de Graaf, is involved in this work to make sure that it answers to SME needs.

In view of the importance of the environment control for the real small company we decided to prepare a project for an environmental management guide aiming for use down to micro-company level. This project is in preparation for submission to the European Commission.

Thus, for the time being, our future work will be focussed on these two points:

• Continue to try to involve ourselves in the ISO guideline work at TC level.
• Propose our own guide solution for the small & micro-enterprise.

 

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