ISO 14001 Clause 4.3

ISO 14001 clause 4.3 is designed to provide a method for a company to identify environmental aspects and to determine those that are significant so they can be addressed as a priority activity.

When identifying the environmental aspects within the defined scope of the EMS a company should consider the inputs and outputs, whether intended or not, associated with its current and relevant past activities, products and services.

You should include planned or new developments, or new or changed activities, products and services. This method needs to include normal and abnormal operating conditions, shutdown and startup conditions, as well as reasonably predictable emergency situations.

You don’t have to consider each individual product, component or raw material for the input. You can choose categories of operations, families of products and services to identify their environmental aspects.

There are as many approaches to this identification of environmental aspects as there are companies with an EMS. Regardless of the approach used you need to consider these environmental categories:

• Emissions to air
• Releases to water
• Releases to land
• Use of raw materials and natural resources
• Use of energy
• Energy omitted, (heat, radiation, vibration)
• Waste and by-products, and
• Physical attributes (size, material, shape, etc)

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