The Worst We Could Do Is Isolate Ourselves

In most corporate offices, the environmental department is an enigma, not really, more like sidelined given its relative novelty. Unlike accounting, legal, facilities engineering or purchasing, it is only recently that such units are being put into place when things like environmental compliance issues and safety concerns are being addressed given its legal and economic consequences. While working for the fastfood, people from other departments would ask me what is the purpose of an EHS department? Being new at that time, I was surprised that a lot of old timers were not oriented on the purpose of such group.

More surprised, I found out that our group's decision-making process was not directly linked to anyone at the executive level which in my prior industry affiliation was the usual case. This coming from an industry dominated by ISO14001 certifications where top management commitment is and auditable criteria.

I am validating the article I previously posted were only 12% of the surveyed firms in the United States have executive teams directly involved in sustainability programs, I agree that this is the usual norm not only in Corporate America but in emerging economies. Top management often sets up this units or departments not because of its commitment to the environment but to minimize the risks brought about by environmental compliance issues and stakeholder advocacy on a company's productivity.

If your EHS/CSR group is stuck in that situation, the worst you can do is isolate yourselves. By isolating and even stigmatizing such groups, the environmental concern becomes less mainstream within an organization. Having our jobs does not make us special as if we are mystical beings. I have always cautioned that an environmental management program must be rationalized not mysticized, because turning it into a somewhat spiritual  experience does not allow it to have the proper organizational infrastructure it needs to become mainstream where only a few in the organization could understand it and even appreciate your groups existence. It is becoming  more of a fad and not an essential part in the growth of an organization. If you are in a dead-locked situation, where top management does not even recognize the purpose of your presence in the office when they see you, again the worse you can do is try to make an impression.  It would be a lot better to make sure that everyone including your janitor and photocopy guy knows and appreciates what you are doing. By developing the lower ranks of the hierarchy, the change necessary can reach the top, noting from the book Thinking in Systems, the purpose of the hierarchy is to fulfill the needs of those in the bottom.

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Torn Between Compliance and Commitment

Regulatory agencies expect companies to be committed. More often than not, the usual third world company is just complying to environmental standards because commitment to environmental standards or eventual improvement in environmental performance is not the usual goal to achieve a company's bottom line.

In my experience working with ISO14001 firms, getting certified is a requirement by their customer,  often a multinational company with a Triple Bottomline Agenda which in turn forces the toll manufacturer to comply with domestic environmental regulations since to the cost to lose a certification will amount to losing a contract that a business is wholly dependent on.

What if the customer does not require a certification on the part of their suppliers? The motivation of suppliers to comply to comply with environmental regulations is very minimal since it has no effect on their bottomlines.

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Is Basic Environmental Awareness Enough to Make Environmental Claims?

In relation to what I wrote earlier, establishing an EMS based on ISO 14001 does not require a highly technical set of environmental programs but more emphasis is done in the commitment of top management to improvements and adhering to a clear environmental policy.

However, branding a company as environmentally compliant without reference to any standard is blatantly a practice of Greenwashing. Though most local companies are not aware, a specific standard is present in the ISO 14000 series that gives specific/systematic guidelines on how to integrate the results of implementing an EMS into the product labeling or eventual marketing of the outputs of the production process.

ISO14020:2000 was developed to ensure that environmental claims are done in a responsible and technologically validated and verifiable manner.

Mere environmental awareness in not enough, oftentimes results of a Life Cycle Analysis is essential to know that what is being claimed by a specific product indeed is validated and verified.

A few moments ago while watching the news, I heard a congressman marketing the merits of a specific renewable energy source and dismissing the contribution of others. What came into my mind, given the corrupt nature of most traditional politicians, is that this congressman may have had a "kickback" in the investment and marketing efforts of the said renewable energy technology (mere impression only, no claims).

It is neither ethically nor empirically correct to simply dismiss the benefits of other renewable energy sources and proclaim one source as the best unless a full benefit-cost analysis is presented in due diligence.

As common consumers we would never fully know unless we take the full effort to research further on what are the impacts of certain products to our health, safety and the environment.

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Going further with ISO 14001

The great deal of my professional work experience has been all about the implementation of ISO14001. In 2000, fresh out of college, I was tasked to maintain the documentation requirements of a school's certification based on the specifications of ISO14001:1996, at that time I had the impression that it was a very technical concept but almost a decade in implementing the standard and doing consultancy work on the requirement for multiple industries it was easy as a breeze.

That may have been a biased statement given my years of experience in the field but some people still think that ISO14001 is something that can only be achieved by certified firms or industries. This is a common misconception. We should not look at ISO 14001 as a technical requirement that involves a drastic change in technology or production system but rather we should look at the standard as a systematic framework to gradually achieve changes starting with the organizational structure where people on top of the hierarchy agrees to make a change. The change doesn't have to be specific as long as a commitment is made and a willingness to spearhead the change...once this commitment on top is in place the behavioral and technological change will gradually occur.

Carrying the common misconception, most firms or organizations shun away from implementing the standard and make the common mistake of jumping onto technological innovations without the proper organizational infrastructure that will allow pollution control technologies or environmental programs to become integrated in the production system.

Unlike the other management system standards, EMS based on ISO14001 is the simplest of all and with the revision of ISO9001 for 2008, other management system standards have revised their requirements in alignment for ISO14001 in able to achieve easier integration.

Most fast foods, the really big ones implement a HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point) System or Food Safety Management System based on ISO 22000. Given the management system infrastructure being in place, a fast food firm who wishes to implement an EMS can integrate it with HACCP/FSMS. However, another short-coming of other fastfoods is their lack of a formal HACCP system to ensure non-contamination of products within the chain of custody prior to human consumption.

Going back to ISO14001, my point is, we should never fear a standard. It is by raising our standards even in the way we do things that eventually raises our quality of life.

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The Nature of Understanding Nature

I have no intention of antagonizing anyone I'm working with, it is just a bit frustrating when you sit in a table and everyone keeps blabbering about their solutions in fixing the environment. The problem I guess is not the environmental compliance problem itself but we don't have a common understanding of what is the nature of the non-compliance problem we are dealing with, we are looking at it at different angles.

Some say its the lack of technology while some say the sector is trying to achieve a point source standard that is inappropriate for the given industry. Looking back, I find it funny because I also blamed the government that the necessary infrastructure to control pollution is not in place such as the lack of proper land use planning in a given area. We all think differently and I am hoping a proper way of thinking could be established.

I have always believed in the specifications of the ISO 14001 management system standard as an effective, system-based approach towards environmental compliance and eventually improvement in environmental performance but the people I work with would always turn a blind ear whenever I propose the merit of such a system. They think of it as something highly technical and they would go back to their haphazard approach to managing an organization's environmental impact which over the long run fails to register any improvement in overall performance. They just could not see that it is just an outlined framework not a technical specification.

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