ISO 14001:2004 standard is under revision, a draft has been released for comment and, once approved, will become ISO 14001:2015 and looks set to push adoption of greener processes.
One of the major changes will be that top management will be expected to understand their organisation’s environmental issues, support the environmental management system and champion better performance.
Esti Kilian, national head of marketing services at Ricoh SA said, There are numerous developments specifically related to environmental performance that ISO-certified organisations will need to consider if they wish to retain their certifications. They’ll need to better understand their environmental impacts, improve environmental performance, make specific commitments, extend influence into the value chain, prove compliance, and several others.
Ricoh’s carbon balanced printing programme assists print service providers (PSPs) and commercial enterprises to achieve that in several ways. It is a standard’s-based calculator that conforms with ISO 16759, it analyses every facet of an organisation’s print carbon footprint, right back to water volumes consumed during media production, and tracks performance for businesses as they operate throughout the year.
The programme also offers carbon credits for organisations as they adopt keener, greener measures. The credits are generated at Ricoh’s wind farm in India used to generate electricity. Once customers have reduced their carbon footprint as much as possible they can purchase credits at market prices from Ricoh, the cost of which is greatly reduced in recent times.
Commercial enterprises with in-house print production facilities will gain the ability to provide an ISO-certified report through the carbon balanced printing programme, says Kilian. That’s a major differentiator for us that will facilitate their requirement to maintain their ISO certification.
