#WorldStandardsDay

By Anya Ledwith Comment Closed
World Standards Day Today is #WorldStandardsDay. How can standards help your business? As a keen environmentalist Helen wanted to reduce her company’s impact. She put in recycling bins, tried to reduce energy and even started to look at packaging. But she was driving it alone and she needed to progress. She thought she needed more structure. The clincher came when, as a B2B supplier, many clients asked for good environmental credentials and carbon data. It was then easy to get buy in from the Board. Using ISO 14001, Helen’s company put in the processes and resources to really understand their environmental impacts, manage them and communicate their successes to staff and clients. It was a bit of a journey, but the framework and audits kept the momentum going. And now they are developing stronger relationships to clients to help reduce impacts all round. What a win-win-win situation! --- I am Anya Ledwith of Eshcon Ltd, an award-winning environmental and carbon consultancy specialising in #ISO14001 Environmental Management Systems,...
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B Corp certification – how EMS improves your chances

By Anya Ledwith Comment Closed
B Corp certification - how EMS improves your chances I’m still getting enquiries from companies wanting to go for B Corp, but they need help with environmental management. It’s been an interesting development for me. Most of my clients want an EMS because their customers demand ISO 14001 certification or they use it for legal compliance issues. The new companies aren't coming to me for help with the application itself (although I do have a partner consultant who does this) – they actually need me to help them with the environmental section.   What is a B Corp? B Corp is quite a challenge and a great achievement. Certified B Corporations are businesses that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency and legal accountability. Instead of just driving profits, they have a strong purpose (indeed it’s written into their Articles of Association). Their aim is to redefine business and develop a more inclusive and sustainable economy. There are currently over 3,700 Certified B...
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Eshcon’s ISO 14001 Success

By Anya Ledwith Comment Closed
Eshcon’s ISO 14001 Success Hooray! Another successful ISO 14001 audit. Rather than for my clients, this one was for me! Eshcon is certified to ISO 14001 and has just sailed through the annual surveillance visit with the certification auditor.   Why should a single person business put in an EMS, let alone go to the trouble of certifying to ISO 14001? Well, it allows me to properly understand my environmental impacts, risks and importantly the opportunities arising for the business.   I’ve put in a framework to do this – it doesn’t have to be overly onerous, given the size and nature of the business. No endless procedures, nice concise records. Having the goal of the annual audits gives me something to aim for, keeps me on track – yes, even committed environmental consultants sometimes get diverted away from their beloved EMS! All in all, a worthwhile exercise for the business… plus of course my clients expect it.   This year’s highlights include: - With business travel by far the...
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Read my ISO 14005 White Paper

By Anya Ledwith Comment Closed
ISO 14005 - Read my White Paper I’m very pleased to say the expert white paper that I wrote for BSI (the British Standards Institute) has recently been published. This covers the standard ISO 14005 detailing a phased approach to implementing an Environmental Management System (EMS). Instead of jumping straight in and doing it all at once, this phased approach helps an organisation develop their EMS, allowing it to mature. This can be particularly useful for small or micro businesses that have limited internal resources (time, knowledge, budget, etc.). Ultimately the EMS can mature enough to be, if required, certified to ISO 14001. This white paper examines the phased approach methodology – where each element of the EMS undergoes a gap analysis, identifying and the delivering specific improvements. A maturity matrix is given to help with the analysis. This matrix goes through each clause of ISO 14001 and its requirements, showing what is required for extra maturity. To help the reader, the white paper details two case...
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Marking 25 years of ISO 14001

By Anya Ledwith Comment Closed
Marking 25 years of ISO 14001 I am looking forward to speaking at the BSI webinar ‘25 years of ISO 14001 and what the future holds’. Wow, the silver anniversary! ISO 14001 is the world’s most popular environmental standard with nearly 350,000 certifications and it’s been around since 1996…. indeed this is the year I started working in environmental management. As you know I’m a great advocate of ISO 14001 – it provides the best framework for understanding and managing your environmental impacts, risks and opportunities. The webinar will cover the standard’s impact since 1996, but more importantly look forward to how ISO 14001 is going to help organisations tackle the future challenges of environmental management. I am joining a great panel of expert speakers. I will talk about the role of ISO 14001 in tackling climate change – a particularly relevant topic given the widespread interest in Net Zero nowadays. Book now – here is the link. Monday 1st November 1-3pm (UK time).       _____________________ Liked this post? Sign up...
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ISO 14001 User Survey

By Anya Ledwith Comment Closed
ISO 14001 User Survey 2021 Calling all users (and those familiar with) the international standard on Environmental Management Systems ISO 14001. We’re seeking your views on the standard – how it works for you (or doesn’t), what do you like about it, what problems do you encounter and what future challenges do you expect (in relation to changing business practices)? Here is the link to the survey. Survey should take ~20 mins to complete. The survey takes place across the world - it's good to hear views of people from different countries, industry sectors and size of organisation.   Why get involved? - Have your voice heard - Share your experiences - Help inform the revisions of ISO 14001 and its host of supporting standards - And it’s a good opportunity to have a good look at your own EMS.   Why are we doing the ISO 14001 User Survey? Standards are periodically reviewed to ensure they work correctly, deliver value to the user and help them meet their objectives. This user survey supports the...
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Top Tips to go Peat Free

By Anya Ledwith Comment Closed
Top Tips to go Peat Free There is no good enough reason to use peat in your garden or workplace. Of course you’d expect me to say that – as an environmental consultant. But even the top gardeners agree – TV gardener Monty Don has described using peat in your garden as an act of eco-vandalism! Go Peat Free For years, gardeners have used peat-based compost to help plants grow big and strong. Unfortunately, this is bad environmentally on a number of fronts. It is using non-renewable resources, depleting some of the last remaining peat-lands – indeed over 90% of the UK’s lowland peat bogs have been destroyed or damaged. It decimates wild ecosystems and a wealth of wildlife has disappeared. Additionally, peat bogs store large amounts of carbon dioxide, so its release accelerates climate change. Peat-free growing media, like compost and soil conditioners, are available at many garden centres and DIY stores. But they do still sell products using peat as their organic ingredient to a...
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ISO 14090 – 14001 White Paper

By Anya Ledwith Comment Closed
ISO 14090 – 14001 White Paper As well as reducing carbon emissions, we should all be including climate adaptation in our EMS. I recently wrote an article for IEMA on a new white paper to help people do just that.   In Perfect Alignment - Embedding Climate Adaptation into your EMS A new white paper from ISO covers the ISO 14090 ‘Adaptation to climate change’ standard and helps users address these issues in their own Environmental Management Systems. Anya Ledwith and John Dora take a closer look. IEMA members can’t help to be aware of the climate emergency and, in the run-up to COP26, it seems the wider world is taking notice as well. Climate change is already affecting us with different weather patterns, more extreme weather events, sea-level rise, flooding, storm surges, drought and erosion. We are seeing biodiversity loss, poor air quality, effects on employee health and safety, disruptions to operations and value chains. This is triggering changes to the way we vote,...
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Celebrating Eshcon’s 15th Anniversary

By Anya Ledwith Comment Closed
Celebrating Eshcon’s 15th Anniversary Help me celebrate! 15 years ago, I set up Eshcon to develop and deliver my mission – to make environmental management THE business norm. 2006 seems an age ago now. It’s strange to look back and think about how I, and the business, have developed. Eshcon became full-time in 2012, previously working one day per week. I’ve had a rollercoaster of a ride – learning how to set up and run a business (never done that before), developing new services that clients really value, getting out and about to raise the profile of environmental management to a whole new audience. This is no mean feat seeing as most SMEs don’t last more than five years.   Anniversary party? Of course, I wanted to mark the anniversary. Pre Covid, it would be normal for companies to hold a little soirée - inviting clients, colleagues and partners for drinks and canapés. Parties aren’t really my thing, even if we were allowed to meet in person. I...
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How to Plan Environmental Audits

By Anya Ledwith Comment Closed
How to Plan Environmental Audits I was pleased to share my experiences of environmental auditing again recently on a very well attended IEMA webinar. I was joined by Gillian Gibson (Gibson Training), Ben Goodwin (IEMA) and Matthew Goldberg (National Grid). We are all part of IEMA’s Environmental Auditing Committee, a working group of experts ranging from consultants, in-house auditors and UKAS the organisation that oversees certification bodies. We are reviewing the IEMA Register of Environmental Auditors and prepared briefing papers on the value of environmental auditing. The committee has also developed a series of webinars, some for experienced auditors and others for those new to the industry – the latter, the Environmental Auditing 101 series, examines different elements of auditing and the ISO 14001 standard. This, our most recent webinar, was titled ‘Planning, scoping & resourcing for successful audits’. This was obviously a subject of great interest as we had over 500 people join us. Pitfalls of not planning Why should you prepare for an environmental...
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ISO 50001 Gap Analysis

By Anya Ledwith Comment Closed
Mind the Gap – are you Ready for ISO 50001? We know that energy efficiency is good for your business – save energy, save money. If you want to have a deeper focus on energy, why not expand your existing ISO 14001 Environmental Management System and get ISO 50001?   What is ISO 50001? With their soaring energy costs, I see that more and more companies are interested in Energy Management Systems (EnMS). The system helps them understand and manage energy consumption and budgets, in a formalised way. It can then be certified to the international standard ISO 50001. But why start from scratch? It’s much easier to build upon an existing management system. All significant management systems standards follow the same ‘high level structure’ so that the core framework for each is the same. This makes it more straight-forward to expand existing systems (e.g. ISO 14001 Environmental Management System or ISO 9001 Quality) to incorporate energy and the requirements of ISO 50001. The cyclic process of the ISO...
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Green business is a growing priority

By Anya Ledwith Comment Closed
Green business is a growing priority New research from the Carbon Trust has found that sustainability is becoming more important to large companies as a result of Covid-19. The research into ‘Corporate attitudes towards sustainability’ covered 450 large companies (all over 1,000 staff & >25% more than 5,000) in Germany, France, Mexico, Singapore, Spain and the UK. More of a priority Nearly three-quarters said environmental management is likely to become 'somewhat' or 'significantly’ more important for them as a result of Covid-19. It’s not just those that are thriving. 70% of those experiencing substantial disruption from the pandemic expect sustainability to become somewhat or significantly more important. It is interesting to note that three-quarters of organisations interviewed had been negatively impacted by Covid - 32% significantly and 4% saying it represented an existential threat to their organisation. Other research (e.g. by Capgemini) shows that consumers are also interested more in environmental and social issues – this is true both after the Covid lockdown and in the preceding...
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Avoiding Extinction!

By admin Comment Closed
Avoiding Extinction! “Today WE are the asteroid causing many, many species to go extinct simultaneously.” Last night I got round to watching Extinction: The Facts, the latest David Attenborough documentary on the BBC, looking at how humans are affecting the ecosystems and the species on which we depend. This blog summarises some of the key points and briefly quotes the experts interviewed. One million plant and animal species face extinction. It was heart wrenching, to see the damage we’re doing to our beautiful planet. Also really frustrating to think how this is affecting ourselves as well. The programme started with a ranger protecting the last two Northern White Rhinos – a mother and daughter. It’s so sad to think that when they die, that amazing species will be gone forever. While the high-profile species like orangutans and rhinos get the coverage, it’s going to be the small ones that affect us personally most. There are grave impacts for us all – affecting our food, our water and...
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Have you ever been Forest Bathing?

By admin Comment Closed
Have you ever been Forest Bathing? Last weekend I had a lovely walk around Heartwood Forest, a site owned & managed by the Woodland Trust. Until 2008, this 347-hectare site in Hertfordshire was just agricultural land, now it makes the largest continuous new native forest in England, with 600,000 native trees planted by volunteers. In addition, there are precious pockets of ancient bluebell woodland, old hedgerows, wildflower meadows, wonderful bird life and open grassland. I spent a couple of hours there, meandering around the trails, enjoying the woodland areas, young & old. It was a pleasure to listen to the birds, watch the squirrels, eat the blackberries, feel the breeze on my face. Forest Bathing At a business meeting recently, I was introduced to the concept of forest bathing. First developed in Japan in the 1980s, ‘shinrin-yoku’ is not about wild swimming in tree-lined ponds (you don’t need to pack your swimsuit), but more about walking in woodland, slowing down and immersing yourself in the forest...
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Why use UKAS accredited certification bodies

By admin Comment Closed
Certification - Why you should use UKAS accredited certification bodies You know I often extol the virtues of an Environmental Management System (EMS), using the ISO 14001 standard. It is a great way to manage your impacts & costs, comply with the law & engage with your customers & staff on issues that are important to them. Although you don’t need to get it certified, it is good practice to do so. Externally certification gives validity to the EMS, demonstrates you are serious about the quality of your system & helps identify where to improve. UKAS accredited certification bodies You would bring in auditors from a certification body to do this. 'Cert bodies' may cover a range of standards (ISO 14001, 9001, 27001 etc) and/or industry sectors. Certification bodies are themselves overseen by UKAS, the National Accreditation Body, which is responsible for determining the technical competence & integrity of these organisations. Maybe surprisingly it is not mandatory to use a UKAS accredited certification body, even...
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Using ISO 14001 to go Net Zero

By admin Comment Closed
Using ISO 14001 to go Net Zero Net Zero is the new buzzword. With so much more interest in climate change nowadays, from individuals & companies alike, it is not surprising that many businesses are committing to reduce & even neutralise their carbon emissions. The trouble is, most people don’t know where to start. It’s exciting to set the goal, but to achieve it requires a considered approach. Luckily, that’s where ISO 14001 comes in. ISO 14001, the Environmental Management Systems (EMS) standard, offers a formalised framework for identifying your environmental impacts, including climate risks & carbon emissions.   ISO 14001 EMS & Climate Change My latest webinar for IEMA was attended by nearly 200 people. I shared the virtual stage with Marek Bidwell, Nick Blyth of IEMA & also Kirit Patel of DHL Supply Chain, who gave an overview of DHL’s Environmental Management System & approach to risks & opportunities. I spoke about how ISO 14001 can be used to turn climate aspirations into reality. Climate...
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Tell me your Environmental Stories

By admin Comment Closed
Tell me your Environmental Stories “Where do your machines go when they die, Daddy?” A talk with his young daughter prompted the MD of medical manufacturing company to start their environmental journey, managing energy, materials & waste – all done through their ISO 14001 Environmental Management System. With the ongoing pandemic, I’m making use of the time I used to spend travelling. Rather than learning a new language or baking sourdough bread, I’m finally getting round to writing my book. It’s all about how, why & when to put in an Environmental Management System.   Do you have environmental stories to share? For my research, I want to speak to businesses, particularly SMEs, who have an ISO 14001 Environmental Management System. Why did they get started? How involved is senior management? Did they use a consultant? How long do staff spend each month? What motivates staff to be part of environmental projects? What’s the weirdest thing found in the audit? Anecdotes & stories are really useful, especially when...
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10 Top Tips for a great Environmental Policy

By admin Comment Closed
10 Top Tips for a great Environmental Policy All organisations should have an Environmental Policy. It’s a great way to communicate with customers; particularly in the B2B supply chain, they often ask for the policy & supporting data. The benefits of having a policy include: Shows commitment to good environmental management Embeds the environment into core business practices - finding efficiencies & cost savings, reducing pollution, saving energy & addressing climate change Shows leadership & links to executive responsibility Simply communicates to stakeholders (including staff & customers) Helps drive change & keep up momentum. Your Environmental Policy is often people’s first introduction to your environmental activities. So, remember to make it interesting, relevant and available. But where do you start?   Here are my 10 Top Tips on how to write a great Environmental Policy: The policy is meant for everyone to see, so make sure it's easy to read and understand - not too dry or filled with jargon. Keep it short - one A4 sheet...
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10 Golden Rules of Remote Auditing

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10 Golden Rules of Remote Auditing 400 webinar delegates asked for more help With the continued Covid-19 disruption, the use of remote environmental audits is now common place. Remote audits allow organisations to continue with the established audit programme, ensure the EMS works well & staff are properly engaged. This is relevant for internal audits & especially important for third party audits (annual surveillance visits & certification audits). I was recently part of the expert panel on a webinar for IEMA – we gave advice on how to prepare for & conduct remote audits, from the perspective of both auditors & auditees. We had over 400 people on the webinar, with lots of great questions asked. And the feedback was – more help please! So, the panel sat down & wrote a short guide - The 10 Golden Rules of Remote Auditing. Again helping auditors & auditees prepare & get the best out of their audits. The Golden Rules are supported by simple pieces of...
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My Story, My Mission, My Vision

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My Story, My Mission, My Vision On this World Environment Day, I wanted to share my story. Much environmental messaging comes across as (slightly) negative – we’ve got to stop doing / reduce / prevent XYZ or it’ll devastating for us / the planet / wildlife / oceans. And yes, this is true. It is important to change. But negativity & fear don’t motivate most people. It can be much more inspiring to focus on the positive… to have something wonderful to aim for. So, I thought I’d share how I got involved in environmental management (My Story), what I’m trying to achieve (My Vision) and how I go about this (My Mission).   My Story My Story begins with me, aged 10, sitting on the floor in front of the TV watching the wonderful David Attenborough’s Life on Earth. This series was so inspirational to me, seeing the beautiful world around us, its diversity & fragility. We are so lucky to live here & benefit from...
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