Environmental Aspects and Impacts Identification and Evaluation
Aspects and Impacts in Brief
Aspects are the elements of activities that interact with the environment. Impacts are the environmental changes those aspects cause. The register identifies both and rates significance so the system targets what matters most.
Environmental Aspects and Impacts Assessment
Everything else in an environmental management system flows from this one exercise. Until you have identified your environmental aspects, worked out which matter most and understood the impacts they cause, you cannot set meaningful objectives, decide where controls need to sit, or focus training where it does any good. Get the aspects assessment right and the rest of the EMS more or less builds itself. Get it wrong and the system will never feel grounded.
The terminology can feel abstract at first. In plain terms, an aspect is something the business does that touches the environment - burning fuel, storing solvents, generating waste, discharging wastewater. The impact is what happens to the environment as a result - climate change, air pollution, water contamination, resource depletion. One aspect can have several impacts, and several aspects can contribute to the same impact.
What ISO 14001 Clause 6.1.2 Requires
Clause 6.1.2 of ISO 14001 requires the organisation to determine the environmental aspects of its activities, products and services that it can control and those it can influence. It must determine the associated environmental impacts, considering a life cycle perspective. The organisation then has to determine which aspects are significant using criteria it sets itself, and maintain documented information on all of this.
Two points are often missed on a first read. First, aspects include those the organisation can influence, not just those it directly controls. A company that specifies the materials its suppliers use is influencing upstream aspects even if it does not own the process. Second, a life cycle perspective is required - so aspects from procurement, transport, customer use and end-of-life disposal need to be considered, not only on-site operations.
Identifying Environmental Aspects
The practical starting point is a walk-round and a worked list. Go through every activity in the scope of the EMS - production, storage, maintenance, office operations, transport, procurement, waste handling - and ask what it uses, what it produces, what it emits, and what could go wrong.
Typical aspect categories include energy use, water use, raw material use, emissions to air, discharges to water, waste generation, noise, use of chemicals, land contamination risk, disturbance to ecosystems, and generation of waste at end-of-life for the organisation's products. Normal, abnormal and emergency conditions all need to be considered. A tank of oil inside a bund is a minor aspect under normal conditions but a very significant one if it ruptures.
The exercise works best when people close to the work are involved. A walk-round with a production supervisor and a maintenance fitter will identify aspects that would never surface in a manager's office. Supplier information, material safety data sheets and utility bills help quantify the aspects once they are identified.
Assessing Environmental Aspect Significance
Not every aspect is significant. A working aspects register typically shows a small number of significant aspects and a larger number that are identified and then rated low-significance, with documented reasoning.
The standard does not mandate a specific method for assessing significance, only that the criteria are defined and applied consistently. Most organisations use a scoring approach that considers some combination of: the scale and severity of the potential impact, the frequency or likelihood of occurrence, the regulatory status of the aspect, the concern of interested parties, and the organisation's ability to influence the aspect.
A simple example: a small office using mains electricity. The aspect (energy use) is routine, the impact (carbon emissions and resource depletion) is real but diffuse, the regulatory position is basic, the scale is modest. Most assessment methods would rate this as a moderate aspect - worth managing but not top priority. A solvent degreasing bath in a workshop is a different matter: higher severity if spilled, greater regulatory relevance, more interested-party attention. A simple scoring system captures that difference clearly.
Life Cycle Perspective in Environmental Aspects Assessment
The life cycle requirement added in the 2015 edition of ISO 14001 means the aspects assessment cannot stop at the factory gate. Upstream aspects - extraction of raw materials, transport into the site, supplier energy use - may be significant even if the organisation does not directly control them. Downstream aspects - customer use of the product, transport to customers, end-of-life disposal - may account for the majority of a product's environmental footprint.
The organisation does not have to assess the life cycle in quantitative detail, but it does have to consider it. F-ENV6 is the tool most often used to document this consideration, feeding the results back into the aspects register where material.
Maintaining the Environmental Aspects Register
Aspects and significance are not set once and forgotten. The register should be reviewed when the business changes - new processes, new products, new sites, new chemicals, new suppliers - and at a scheduled interval such as annually. Management review (Clause 9.3) should confirm that the aspects register remains current and representative of what the business actually does.
The register itself is usually a spreadsheet or form listing each aspect, the activities it arises from, the associated impacts, the significance rating, the relevant legislation, the operational controls in place, and any objectives or improvement actions linked to it. F-ENV4 or the newer F-IMS60 provide the standard structure; the version used depends on the toolkit.
The aspects register is the first document I look at in an ISO 14001 audit and usually the one I spend most time on. If it is thin, generic or clearly cut-and-pasted from a template, I know the rest of the system will not hold up. If it shows evidence of thinking - aspects specific to the site, a method for significance that matches what the organisation told me, life cycle considerations included where they matter - then I can usually trust what comes next.
I also check the linkages. For each significant aspect, is there an operational control? Is there a legal obligation that connects? Has it fed into an objective or improvement action? Significance ratings without consequences are a paper exercise.
We redo our aspects register whenever we bring in a new process or a new substance, and we review the whole thing annually. When we changed solvent suppliers last year it flagged up two aspects we had not been tracking - a different degreaser and a shift in disposal route. Caught during the review, dealt with before it became a problem.
The commonest trap in aspects assessment is listing everything at the same level. A register that treats using paper the same as storing 500 litres of diesel has not really assessed significance. Good registers are ruthless about rating - most things get identified and then judged low-priority so attention goes where it is needed. The other trap is forgetting the life cycle view: a brochure-printing company once had a beautifully documented on-site operation but had never looked at the environmental impact of the paper it was buying, which turned out to be by far the largest aspect in its life cycle.
Practical Compliance Guidance
You can set-up an environmental aspects and impacts register for your business, which shows the aspect, a description of the aspect, significance status and controls in place which have been applied to mitigate the environmental impact. For a more detailed document on individual environmental aspects, this can be done via an environmental aspects assessment, detailing the description of the aspect, potential impact on the environment, and applicable legislation, significance, current controls in place and additional control measures required.
The IMS1 Manual Section 6 addresses environmental aspects and impacts, including identification, significance assessment and integration with objectives and operational controls.
The following alphaZ documents support identifying aspects, assessing significance and maintaining the register.
| alphaZ document | How to use it |
|---|---|
| ISO 14001 Toolkit | The complete set of documents for building an ISO 14001 EMS, including aspects assessment tools and the register. |
| F-ENV3 Environmental Aspect Assessment | Worksheet for assessing each identified aspect against significance criteria. Completed per activity and used to feed the aspects register. |
| F-ENV4 Environmental Aspects Register | The standard register format listing aspects, impacts, significance ratings and controls. Use as the consolidated record of what has been identified and how it is managed. |
| F-IMS60 Environmental Aspects and Impacts Register | An alternative register format, structured for use within an integrated management system. Choose whichever register format fits the way the organisation runs its documentation. |
| F-ENV6 Environmental Life Cycle | Template for recording life cycle considerations for products or services from raw material through to disposal, feeding findings back into the aspects register. |
| PP-6-100 Environmental Management Policy Procedure | The operational procedure that sets out how aspects, impacts and controls are managed as part of the EMS day-to-day. |
| ER9 Legal Register | Cross-references aspects to applicable legislation. An aspect with a regulatory dimension is usually a significant one. |
Note - all the above files can be downloaded with an alphaZ subscription.
Frequently Asked Questions
UK Legislation
The following UK legislation is directly relevant to identifying environmental aspects and setting controls. Organisations outside the UK should identify the equivalent legislation applicable in their jurisdiction.
- Environmental Protection Act 1990
- Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016
- Waste (England and Wales) Regulations 2011
- Environmental Damage (Prevention and Remediation) (England) Regulations 2015
- Water Resources Act 1991
