The Scope of the System
A scope statement lists all sites, areas, activities, products or services subject to the certification audit and that also will appear on the ISO 14001 certificate issued to the organisation.
An organisation must decide if more than one site will be registered under a multisite certification or if each individual unit or site will seek certification separately. It must also decide if there will be limitations, such as the exclusion of certain products, services or geographical areas.
Consider the following questions when developing the scope statement:
- Has the organisation developed a controllable procedure to identify the environmental aspects of its activities, products or services?
- Have the concepts of control and influence consistently and effectively been applied to the procedure?
- Has the organisation effectively applied the procedure, and has it identified all the obvious environmental aspects?
- Have all the obvious environmental impacts – actual and potential – related to the organisation’s environmental aspects been identified?
- Are the criteria for evaluation significance relevant, appropriate and consistently applied? That is, have all significant environmental impacts been classified as such?
- When setting environmental objectives and targets, are the environmental aspects identified that are relevant to the environmental impacts?
- Has the information been updated?
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