Pollution prevention based on the ISO 14000 environmental management standards

The ISO 14000 series of standards provides specifications for an Environmental Management System (EMS) as well as guidelines for developing an EMS, environmental labels, environmental auditing, environmental performance evaluation, and life-cycle environmental assessment. The standards were developed by Technical Committee 207 of the International Organization for Standardization and the first two standards (ISO 14001 and 14004) were published in 1996. This paper will briefly discuss the elements of ISO 14001 and will describe how this standard provides direction for industry to initiate and maintain pollution prevention programs.