Skip to content
SecuriFii

Management system

ISO 14001 — Environmental Management

ISO 14001 is the environmental management standard procurement asks for by name, and it changed this year. The 2015 edition is withdrawn and the 2026 edition replaced it. Whether you are certifying for the first time or holding a certificate issued against the old text, the work is the same management system — and the clock is not.

Discuss this
Standard
ISO 14001:2026
Published
Apr 2026
Replaces
14001:2015
Certificate cycle
3 years

What changed, and why it matters now

ISO 14001 specifies requirements for an environmental management system — an EMS — covering how an organisation identifies its environmental aspects, meets its compliance obligations, sets objectives and improves its performance.

The edition matters more than usual this year. ISO 14001:2015 was withdrawn and replaced by ISO 14001:2026, published in April 2026. A certificate issued against the 2015 text does not become worthless overnight, but it is issued against a superseded standard, and accredited certification bodies run a transition with an end date after which it stops being valid.

We have seen this play out once already in the adjacent standard. ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certificates expired on 31 October 2025, including certificates whose printed expiry date was later — because the transition deadline, not the certificate, decided. The same shape applies here, and the organisations that got caught last time were the ones who read the date on the document.

What it will ask of you

An EMS is not an environmental policy. These are the four places that difference becomes visible to an auditor.

  • Environmental aspects and impacts

    What your activities, products and services actually do to the environment — emissions, discharges, waste, resource and energy use — determined across a lifecycle perspective rather than at the factory gate.

  • Compliance obligations, identified and evaluated

    The environmental law and regulation that applies to you, plus the obligations you took on by contract, and a process that periodically evaluates whether you are meeting them rather than assuming you are.

  • Objectives with something behind them

    Measurable environmental objectives, the plan to reach them, and the monitoring that says whether you did. An objective with no measurement is a statement of intent.

  • Operational control, including your suppliers

    The controls that keep significant aspects managed day to day, emergency preparedness for the incidents your operations could cause, and the environmental requirements you pass down to the organisations working for you.

Why organisations implement it

  • It is asked for by name in procurement and in supply-chain questionnaires, increasingly alongside ISO 27001 rather than instead of it.
  • It turns environmental compliance from a periodic scramble into an evaluated process with records.
  • It shares the management system structure with ISO 27001, so an organisation already certified is building on scaffolding it has paid for.
  • It produces the measured performance data that customers, investors and reporting frameworks increasingly ask for.

Not sure this is the standard you need?

Tell us what triggered the question — a customer, an auditor, a contract clause — and we will say which of these applies, including when the answer is none of them.

Ask a practitioner

Where we come in, and where we stop

Certification is performed by an independent accredited certification body, never by us. And a limit worth stating plainly on this standard in particular: we build the management system, we do not measure your emissions or sign an environmental report. Where specialist measurement is needed, that is a laboratory or an environmental consultancy, and we will say so.

Ours

  • Scope, context and interested parties
  • Environmental aspects and impacts, with significance criteria you can defend
  • Compliance obligations register and the evaluation process
  • Objectives, programmes and the monitoring behind them
  • Operational control, emergency preparedness and supplier requirements
  • Training, internal audit and certification readiness — including transition from 14001:2015

Not ours

  • Stage 1 and Stage 2 assessment, by an accredited certification body
  • Emissions measurement, environmental testing or a laboratory analysis
  • A legal opinion on whether you comply with environmental law

How we build it

Certification, where you want it, is performed by an independent accredited certification body.

  1. 01Scope and contextWhich sites, activities and services the EMS covers, the interested parties whose expectations bear on it, and the boundary you are prepared to defend to an auditor.
  2. 02Aspects, impacts and significanceWhat your operations do to the environment and which of those effects are significant — with criteria written down, because significance is the judgement the whole system rests on.
  3. 03Compliance obligationsThe environmental law, regulation and contractual commitments that apply, in a register that names the obligation, the owner and how compliance is evaluated.
  4. 04Objectives and operational controlMeasurable objectives with programmes behind them, the controls that manage significant aspects day to day, and emergency preparedness for what your operations could cause.
  5. 05Training and internal auditCompetence for the people whose work affects significant aspects, then an internal audit against the standard with findings tracked to closure.
  6. 06Certification or transition readinessManagement review, the evidence pack, and support through Stage 1 and Stage 2 — or through a transition audit where you hold a certificate against the 2015 edition.

What you get from us

  • A defined EMS scope with its context and interested parties
  • An environmental aspects and impacts register with written significance criteria
  • A compliance obligations register and a working evaluation process
  • Environmental objectives, programmes and the monitoring that reports on them
  • Operational controls, emergency preparedness and supplier environmental requirements
  • Internal audit, management review and a transition plan where one is needed

Common questions

We hold ISO 14001:2015. Is our certificate still valid?

For now, and not indefinitely. The 2015 edition is withdrawn and ISO 14001:2026 replaced it, so accredited certification bodies run a transition with an end date after which certificates against the old text are no longer valid. Ask your certification body for the deadline that applies to your certificate rather than reading the expiry printed on it — in the 27001:2013 transition, the printed date is exactly what caught people out.

Does ISO 14001 work alongside ISO 27001?

Yes, and that is usually the cheaper way to hold both. They share the management system structure, so scope, leadership, risk-based thinking, document control, internal audit, management review and corrective action are one set of processes serving two standards. What is genuinely separate is the environmental subject matter — aspects, impacts and compliance obligations.

Do we need to measure our carbon footprint?

Not as such. ISO 14001 requires you to determine your environmental aspects and monitor what you have decided is significant, which for many organisations includes energy and emissions but is scoped by your own operations. It is not a greenhouse gas accounting standard, and a certificate is not a carbon disclosure.

How long does it take?

For a first certification, comparable to a first ISMS — the determining factor is how many sites and activities are in scope, not the standard. For a transition from the 2015 edition, considerably less, because the management system already exists and the work is against what changed.

Ready to scope it?

Send the date you are working to and roughly how large the organisation is. You will get a reply from a practitioner with an honest read on whether the date is reachable.

Start the conversation

Related services

All services