#216 What is Environmental Emergency Preparedness?

Apr 30, 2025

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Emergency preparedness is a term you're likely familiar with regarding Health & Safety, but its application is also a key part of the Best Practice Environmental Management Standard, ISO 14001.

ISO 14001 aims to help organisations reduce their overall impact on the environment, and this includes mitigating and responding to any incidents that may adversely affect factors such as biodiversity and water quality in areas where your business is based.

While not applicable to every industry, there are many which need to take greater responsibility in the event of an environmental incident. ISO 14001 provides key guidance in how to create effective processes to ensure you respond swiftly, and in alignment with the law.

In this episode Ian Battersby explains what is meant by emergency preparedness and response within ISO 14001, and how that can apply to your business.

You'll learn

· What is emergency preparedness and response in ISO 14001?

· How do you approach Clause 8.2 in ISO 14001?

· Planning for an environmental emergency

· Definitions of different types of emergency

· How can you prevent an environmental emergency?

Resources

· Isologyhub

· Learn more about ISO 14001

In this episode, we talk about:

[02:05] Episode Summary – Ian explains the purpose of clause 8.2 in ISO 14001, emergency preparedness and response.

[02:35] What is meant by 'emergency preparedness and response' in ISO 14001?: Many will be familiar with emergency preparedness and response in relation to Health and Safety. In Standards such as ISO 45001, it's about ensuring there are plans in place to reasonably foresee and prevent any serious harm to a person or persons affected by our activities

The aim with Clause 8.2 in ISO 14001 is to minimise the risk an organisation poses to the environment. Though, these aren't mutually exclusive and some environmental response plans can prevent harm to both people and the environment.

Ian seeks to clarify this clause further as many have a tendency to point towards their fire evacuation plan and fire drills as the first piece of evidence when demonstrating conformity to clause 8.2 in ISO 14001. While fire is very violent to the environment once it's occurred, the evacuation of people during such an event building offers little in the way of an environmental response.

[05:10] Breaking down Clause 8.2: Clause 8.1 states:

"The organization shall establish, implement and maintain the process(es) needed to prepare for and respond to potential emergency situations identified in 6.1.1."

Like with many Standards, it references an early clause where you should be identifying the relevant emergency situations. Clause 6 focuses on risk and opportunities, and in the case of ISO 14001 this is where you'll establish your environmental aspects and compliance obligations.

Specifically, Clause 6.1.2 states:

"Within the defined scope of the environmental management system, the organization shall determine the environmental aspects of its activities, products and services that it can control and those that it can influence, and their associated environmental impacts."

This would take into consideration any abnormal conditions and reasonably foreseeable emergency situations.

So, this is where you should already have established the emergency situations for which you need to plan for. Risk management is a core of the standards and planning for emergency situations is a core of risk management. You don't write plans in isolation; you will have already established what's important.

[07:30] Planning for emergency: As stated in Clause 8.2:

"The organization shall plan:

a) to take actions to address its risks

b) how to:

1) integrate into environmental management system or other business processes;

2) evaluate the effectiveness of these actions."

This is all part of the familiar PDCA cycle. From Ian's perspective as an auditor, he won't look at emergency plans first, instead looking at an organisations Aspects & Impacts Assessment.

The standard isn't prescriptive on how you assess the impact of what you do or the risks. The methodology is your choice, but it is very explicit in that the content must include abnormal conditions and reasonably foreseeable emergency situations.

[09:40] What are the definitions for different types of emergency situations?

Normal situations are when everything operates as intended, Business as usual, the day-to-day activities you expect: E.G. Standard operation of machinery, a vehicle getting from A to B without issue.

Abnormal situations are when things aren't quite right, not catastrophic, but not business as usual; you can still achieve your intended outcome, but maybe not as quickly or efficiently: E.G. machinery running inefficiently or perhaps using more fuel or lubricant than usual.

They don't necessarily require an emergency plan, but you may want to monitor the severity of such situations and their potential for significant impact if unaddressed.

Emergency situations are serious events requiring immediate attention and which could cause significant environmental impacts. The type of emergency situation that could possibly occur will depend on the type of organisation, but common ones include fire or chemical / fuel spill.

[11:30] What is required by the Standard? – As stated:

You are required to:

A) plan to respond to prevent or mitigate adverse environmental impacts from emergencies; (not human)

B) respond to actual emergencies;

C) prevent or mitigate the consequences of emergencies;

D) periodically test the planned response;

E) review and revise the process, in particular after the occurrence of emergency or test;

F) provide relevant information and training, to relevant interested parties, including persons working under its control.

[13:00] Examples of Emergency Situations – We'll look at a common one, fire. There are still 22,000 workplace fires in the UK each year, which is a significant environmental impact. That amounts to approximately 2,700 tonnes of carbon emissions annually. This in addition to the atmospheric toxins, ground/water contamination, resource loss, waste etc. So, in considering fire as an environmental emergency, these are the impacts.

IOSH states that the most common cause for workplace fires is faulty or misused electrical equipment, followed by flammable/combustible materials, dirt and clutter, human error, smoking and cooking.

One thing to note about those causes is that they are generally required to be controlled by specific legislation. So, you would be looking for a link between compliance obligations (or legal) register, the Aspects & Impacts Assessment and the controls in place to minimise the risks identified in both.

Faulty electrics would stand out, so you would look at what measures could be put in place to prevent such faults occurring, including:

· Preventive maintenance of equipment

· Inspection and testing of electrical fixed wiring

· Portable appliance testing

By demonstrating the processes in place to address these, you can evidence compliance obligations and the planning to reduce the possibility of an emergency situation arising. However, a fire may still occur

[15:40] Example emergency situation – Prevention: – You should look at the planning to prevent such a situation escalating into a full-blown emergency in order to prevent the environmental impact. This could include:

· The maintenance, inspection and testing of fire detection or suppression systems

· The inspection and servicing of firefighting equipment.

· Firefighting equipment training for personnel

Based on what you know about the causes of fire, you should examine smoking policies/practices, catering equipment maintenance, housekeeping, hazardous material management etc.

Proof of fire drills alone enough when it comes to emergency preparedness and response in ISO 14001. Especially from an auditor's perspective, as how can you prove that your fire drills are useful in minimising the impact on the environment?

[17:15] Other emergency situations – Spillage: An area where you can more readily see that preparedness and response directly affects the environmental outcome is where there has been a spillage of some kind.

A spill of a lubricant on a shop floor, for instance, has the potential to cause a slip hazard, affecting the safety of people. The preventive measures, again, have similarities regardless of whether we're talking safety or environment, but do differ in that we're trying to prevent the lubricant then reaching the outside world and contaminating ground or water; that's the environmental impact.

Waste disposal associated with the mopping of a spill; you may be dealing with hazardous waste, which must be disposed of in a controlled fashion under the law.

If you'd like assistance with ISO 14001, get in contact with us, we'd be happy to help.

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