A successful EMS can enhance efficiency and lower costs, reduce resource use and waste, help to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements, encourage employee involvement in environmental performance and improve relations with customers.
Yet most SMEs do not know what an EMS is and, if they do, how it could benefit their business. Even if they are familiar with the concept of an EMS, many smaller businesses lack the technical expertise and resources needed to develop and implement one.
– The Commission for Environmental Cooperation
Lightstone Consulting provides ISO 14001 expertise, sustainability acumen, and organizational development know-how to engage with your organization in crafting a sustainability management system that works for you.
Lightstone can provide a Gap analysis, from where your ISO 14001 conforming Environmental Management System is at, to where it may need to be in order to achieve ISO 14001 certification. With extensive management auditing experience, we can prepare your organization for your certification audit. Bringing in a 3rd party verifier can be an expensive endeavor, especially when you’re not fully prepared for your audit – risking extensive findings to address, or even incurring additional site visits, if your management system is not yet up to snuff.
Working within the assurance world, Lightstone Consulting provides either 3rd party assurance type of audits for ISO 14001 self-declaration of compliance, or will provide a consultative role, to help your organization build an effective EMS, ISO 14001 compliant or not. The key is to construct systems that work well within your organization, where benefits of an effective EMS can be seen in costs savings and genuine stewardship through policy and measured action.
Engaging operations with an Environmental Management System will improve company value through Risk Reduction, Revenue Enhancement and Cost Reductions. This requires Management commitment, reflected in the Environmental Policy (ISO 14001 section 4.2) and engaging employees through training and increased awareness of environmental impact as they do their jobs (ISO 14001 section 4.4.2). Implementation of an EMS promotes employee sense of ownership, environmental stewardship and motivating us all, to continue to make positive contributions in our communities.