The Importance of Documentation in Environmental Management

Introduction

The article for discussion “ISO 14000: Environmental Management” is written by Beverly A. Graves (2009) who discussed the procedures the companies should do in order to minimize the harmful effect they provide on the environment in detail. One of the points in the article is the document control procedure that is very important. EMS and ISO 14001 specify the procedure that must be followed: the revision and updating of the documents from time to time. Moreover, there are two main conditions of the document control that must be done. First, the documents should be properly organized and easily located. Second, the unnecessary information should be removed in time (Graves, 2009).

Websites related to the problem

There are great many of different websites which are related to the problem of environmental management systems and the document control. After the thorough research, three websites were chosen that are related to the problem discussed in the article.

• The ISO 14000 and ISO 1400: The EMS Group (2003) website is important for different organizations as it contains reliable and certified information on the standards about the environmental management system that should be consulted. The site contains useful information on theory and resources for the ISO 14000 Standards. It may help the organization managers, responsible for the environmental management systems, easily find information they want through the table of content that is available for different documents. The information on the document control in environmental management system may be found in the ISO 14001 in the point 4.4.5 ‘Document control’.
• The ISO 14000 Environmental Management Guide (2007) website also contains the information on the standards of the environmental management systems. Moreover, the website is also valuable for the different links to the related information that may be also helpful for people who search something on the topic. The website offers a brief description of the ISOs. The information about the ISO 14001 shows the reader that the document was first published in 1996 and contains the requirements for an environmental management system. The guide gives general information on the standards and on the importance of the document control.
• The International Organization for Standardization (2010) website is the main source of information on the environmental management system. First of all, the website contains brief information on the certificates and the documents that may interest people in the sphere they are interested in. Moreover, there are great many of different related standards and information. The ISO 14001 reflects the information that is discussed in the article is carefully described with the links to the original documents. Moreover, the updated information appears first on this site and then it is widespread to the other websites and sources of information, both Internet and published.

The standards

The environmental management system is important. The standards created in the sphere are aimed to control the harmful effects some companies provide. The importance of these standards may not be valuated and as soon as the new versions of the certificates and new standards appear they should be brought to the wide audience. It is understood that information should be easily reached, readable and trusted.

The information in the article dwells upon the importance of the ISO 14000 standards consideration and the websites that are offered in the current article show where information may be found as well as the latest versions of the documents are presented. The information both the article and sites is given to discuss the importance of the environmental protection on the manufacturing. There are some companies that emit some harmful substances according to the specifics of the manufacturing. The ISO 14000 predetermines such situations and offers some decisions to the problems. In fact, the main focus of both the article and sites in the document control, where the documents may be found and how often they should be reviewed, updated and removed when obsolete.

Conclusion

I wonder how much work should be done to reduce the harmful effect on the environment and how many organizations deal with the problem? First of all, there should be an organization that valuates the environmental situation in the region. Furthermore, the production sphere should be carefully evaluated with the practical understanding how many companies and organizations are busy with the harmful manufacturing and how much they harm the environment.

The very standards of environmental management system should be created. It is not so easy, it is supposed, to do this as a lot of factors should be included and analyzed before the finished certificate and standard like 14000 is created. So, the question is, how much time should different organizations spend on creation of the documents of rules for environmental management system and the place the document control here. Is the document control really important? Should so much time be spent on it?

References

Graves, B. A. (2009). ISO 14000: Environmental Management. PF online. Web.

International Organization for Standardization. (2010). Web.

ISO 14000 and ISO 1400: The EMS Group. (2003). Web.

The ISO 14000 Environmental Management Guide. (2007). Web.