prevention. TNRCC will send several of their registered engineers to your plant, not as enforcement officers, but as pollution prevention consultants.The TNRCC also has a Small Business Assistance Program which offers small businesses free environmental consulting to achieve environmental compliance. The voluntary consultants are referred to as 'enviromentors'. Targets and objectives: tying environmental effects to targets gives a company (and the people who work there) something to work towards and be proud of when they achieve their targets. It helps create "champions" who will do a great deal of work on their own, without cattle prodding from the EHS management. 14000 According to SGS, an international certification organization, these have been the major areas of nonconformance to the standard found in audits: establishing procedures for identifying environmental aspects, integrating the EMS into existing management system elements, identifying appropriate operational controls , and procedures for identifying problems and taking action to eliminate them . Extra attention to these areas during EMS development and a high quality phase I or gap analysis can speed the registration process. ISO 14000 In the policy statement, use words that can be audited and connect to significant aspects and impacts. Words such as "not", "never", always, and " empowered" are inappropriate. ISO 14000 One difference between many existing environmental programs and an ISO 14000 EMS is that the program may not be a a system integrated into all parts of the company. The ISO 14000 system spreads environmental responsibility throughout the organization. There are many gray areas in the ISO 14000 standard. Registrars vary in the way they interpret some things when performing audits. For example, a "major finding" means that there is an important nonconformance with ISO 14000. The nonconformances that are called major findings and what they mean to regist...
