Government agencies consider adopting ISO 14000 standards.

• Author: Grier, Peter
• Position: Industry Viewpoint

As the third largest federal landowner and steward for tens of millions of acres of land, the Defense Department has a vast responsibility to protect the environment. In recent years, the Pentagon has developed environmental programs that emphasize compliance, pollution prevention and conservation.

However, a recent Defense Department Inspector General report concluded that while traditional compliance-based environmental management programs had resulted in substantial improvements in environmental quality and human health and safety, the existing programs were not effective for assuring continual improvement.

The IG report concluded that the Defense Department needed a more mature, quality-based environmental management program to improve compliance, lower compliance costs, decrease regulatory oversight, reduce or eliminate penalties and more effectively demonstrate environmental achievements. Pentagon officials decided that the ISO 14000 provided the tools to achieve those goals.

Executive Order

In April 2000, then-President Bill Clinton issued Executive Order 13148 tided, "Greening the Government through Leadership in Environmental Management." The order was meant to ensure that government agencies implement environmentally sound practices. During his first year in office, President George W Bush re-confirmed EC 13148 as a national priority for government agencies.

The EO requires that each federal agency implement an environmental management system at all appropriate agency facilities by no later than December 2005. As that deadline approaches, many government organizations are finding that ISO 14000 often is a useful option.

ISO 14000 is a series of international standards that were established in 1996 by the International Organization for Standardization. The ISO 14000 series defines and establishes environmental management best practices for global industries.

The Global Environment & Technology Foundation predicts that by the end of 2002 there will be at least 150,000 organizations compliant with ISO 14001 (ISO 14001 is the actual standard in the ISO 14000 system that constitutes third-party registration).

Well before Clinton issued that executive order, the Defense Department had conducted a pilot program for implementation of environmental management systems (EMS) at selected installations. As a result, some military organizations proceeded with ISO 14001 EMS registrations.

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