Last week I co-presented with Catherine Warburton at her offices in Johannesburg about what the changes to ISO 14001 will mean for business, focusing on the strategic aspects.

There was a great turnout with lots of discussion and questions throughout.

You might be asking yourself: What does this have to do with the heading of this blog?

The new ISO 14001 draft standard introduces some fundamental changes to the previous standard. The changes reflect the global societal expectations that have evolved on how companies should manage their environmental impacts. This includes understanding their organisation’s supply chain challenges. The draft standard extends environmental influence to the supply chain. There are specific requirements that relate to the addressing environmental issues in procurement. For example, evaluating the supply of goods, services and outsourced processes, and taking a lifecycle perspective.  These issues are essentially about sustainable procurement. It means identifying the risk in supply chains where there might be a lack of access to certain raw materials, or how their products can impact on degradation or whether it makes sense to source a different type of product.

What became clear from the discussions is that there is still a clear need to make senior management aware of the need for their involvement in developing the EMS. An ISO 14001 auditor also pointed out that by identifying relevant ‘other requirements’ and documents these, it becomes mandatory under the EMS to ensure compliance.

We have written a short FREE guide on what sustainable procurement is, why it’s important and how to get started. You can access it here. If you are interested in attending a breakfast briefing in the future, please contact me for future dates and locations at colleen.theron@clt-envirolaw.com.

For more detail on the subject read our book Strategic Sustainable Procurement: Law and Best Practice.