New ecodesign ISO Standard

A new ISO Standard has been released to help reduce the environmental impacts of products and services.

‘ISO 14006:2011 Environmental management systems - Guidelines for incorporating ecodesign’ gives ‘how to’ guidance to product and service organisations on incorporating ecodesign into any environmental, quality or similar management system. The goal of ecodesign is to integrate environmental aspects into the design and development of products and services.

ISO 14006 will help organisations establish, document, implement, maintain and continually improve their management of ecodesign as part of an environmental management system (EMS). Integrating ecodesign offers several advantages:

• economic benefits, eg, through increased competitiveness, cost reduction and attraction of financing and investments
• promoting innovation and creativity, and identifying new business models
• reducing liability through reduced environmental impacts and improved product knowledge
• improving public image
• enhancing employee motivation.

ISO 14006 is intended for use by organisations that have implemented an EMS to ISO 14001, whether or not they have a quality management system (QMS) to ISO 9001. It can also be useful for organisations that want to reduce the adverse environmental impacts of their products, but do not have a formalised EMS or QMS.