Brief history of environmental standards

This chapter summarizes environmental standards to control environmental pollution. The success of quality management systems, such as British Standard 5750, gave a model for management systems. BS 7750, published in 1992, showed an intention to add new standards to the existing ones. Running along this activity was the European Commission's initiative, the Eco-Management and Auditing Scheme (EMAS), which came into force in 1995 and has overlapped considerably with ISO 14001. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) recognized the need for an international standard called “Environmental Management Systems (EMS)” for environmental monitoring. ISO 14001 is based on BS 7750 and has been in existence since 1996. Organizations that are already certified will be given a substantial time period, in which they need to incorporate the changes into their existing EMS.