The term "EMS" stands for "Environmental Management System". This means what the organization does to minimize harmful effects on the environment caused by its activities, and to achieve continual improvement of its environmental performance.

This is the international standard for environmental management. The organization must determine all the ways its operations interact with the environment such as air, water, land etc.. Organization must identify the ways those interactions impacts the environment and determine whether the impacts are addressed by environmental laws, regulations, or statutes. ISO 14001 specifies the elements that must be in place for an EMS to be complete and effective. An ISO 14001 system incorporates the pre-existing controls i.e. without replacing them and provides management with a new tool to assure that all required controls function correctly, goals are striven for and achieved, and most important is laws / rule and regulations / goals are consistently met.

• Environmental Policy - develop a statement of the organization's commitment to the environment
• Environmental Aspects and Impacts - identify environmental attributes of products, activities and services and their effects on the environment
• Legal and Other Requirements - identify and ensure access to relevant laws and regulations
• Objectives and Targets and Environmental Management Program - set environmental goals for the organization and plan actions to achieve objectives and targets
• Structure and Responsibility - establish roles and responsibilities within the organization
• Training, Awareness and Competence - ensure that employees are aware and capable of their environmental responsibilities
• Communication - develop processes for internal and external communication on environmental management issues
• EMS Documentation - maintain information about the EMS and related documents
• Document Control - ensure effective management of procedures and other documents
• Operational Control - identify, plan and manage the organization's operations and activities in line with the policy, objectives and targets, and significant aspects
• Emergency Preparedness and Response - develop procedures for preventing and responding to potential emergencies
• Monitoring and Measuring - monitor key activities and track performance including periodic compliance evaluation
• Evaluation of Compliance - develop procedure to periodically evaluate compliance with legal and other requirements
• Nonconformance and Corrective and Preventive Action - identify and correct problems and prevent recurrences
• Records - keep adequate records of EMS performance
• EMS Audit - periodically verify that the EMS is effective and achieving objectives and targets
• Management Review - review the EMS

You can have your organization certified as ISO 14001 by the certification body, who will audit your systems against the requirements of the ISO 14001 standard. The auditors will review your policies and procedures, observe your operations, interview employees, and check your records to verify that your system includes all the components required by ISO 14001 and that it is effectively implemented. If your system meets the requirements of ISO 14001, they will issue you a certificate stating that your organization complies with the standard.

Yes. The organization does not require retooling their existing activities as EMS is elastic to do the same. An EMS establishes a management framework by which an organization's impacts on the environment can be systematically identified and reduced. For example, many organizations, including counties and municipalities, have active and effective pollution prevention activities underway. These could be integrated into the EMS taken as a whole.

In order to implement the system effectively and to get the benefits of ISO 14001 EMS, it is necessary to understand the standard's requirement. 14001 enables an organization to establish and assess the effectiveness of procedures to set an environmental policy including objectives, achieve conformance with them, and to demonstrate conformance to others, including interested external parties.

Technical Committee (TC) 207 has developed the standard ISO 14001. The scope of TC 207 is standardization in the field of environmental management tools and systems. Each country sends its experts to the TC meetings to write, edit, and agree on the language to be included in each standard. TC 207 cooperates closely with ISO TC 176 on Quality Management (developers of ISO 9000) in the field of environmental management systems and audits. United States has a Technical Advisory Group (TAG) for each TC which provides input to the experts who represent the U.S. at international TC meetings. These people have direct input to the development of the standards.

Any kind of organization can go for ISO 14001 such as business, school, hospital, non-profit, etc., who really wants to improve and implement the Environmental Management System. It is applicable to both services as well as manufacturing organization.

It is wholly depending on you whether to rewrite the procedure or not and if you want to improve your procedure to help in your business. While rewriting the existing procedure you will find that some are outdated, inaccurate, or less effective than they could be. For rewriting you will not require any particular format, style, or approach for procedures or any other documents.