The new environmental standard now reaches purchasing, the laboratory, the stores and the audit programme. Teresa Girasoli, a chemical engineer with eight years in manufacturing quality, explains where manufacturers will feel the change.
Some years ago, the UK distributor of one of our raw materials closed down. The material was a Category 1 carcinogen, and we bought it in 5 kg containers. Without the distributor, it would come straight from the manufacturer in Asia, in large paper sacks.
We could not split the sacks safely ourselves. We did not have the right equipment for that amount of hazardous powder. So we found a repacker in Europe. I reviewed them. I went through how they handled hazardous materials and checked that every safety measure was in place, including extraction and PPE. We also checked how they would avoid cross-contamination, and whether the packs would reach us sealed and clean.
Handing the job to another company did not mean handing over the responsibility. ISO 14001:2026 asks every manufacturer the same question, this time about the environment.
The timetable
In the UK, certification bodies will stop issuing new certificates to the 2015 version on 31 October 2027, and every certificate has to be on the 2026 version by the end of April 2029. The exact day varies slightly between certification bodies, so check the date with your own. BSI gives the same advice: talk to your certification body early, and start with a gap analysis.
The revision is short, and the clauses are the ones you know. BSI reports no major change to the Support clause. What has changed is where an auditor will look for evidence: in departments that never thought the environmental system was theirs.
Purchasing
The 2015 text talked about ‘outsourced processes’. The 2026 text talks about ‘externally provided processes’. According to BSI, the aim is to remove the ambiguity of the old wording. In practice, this goes beyond the waste contractor and the haulier. It reaches raw-material suppliers, toll manufacturers and repackers.
Environmental criteria now belong in the supplier audit. How a supplier treats the environment affects your own ISO 14001 compliance.
Where you cannot control a supplier, you can still put pressure on them. At one company, a batch of raw material arrived with large plastic fragments in it. We only saw them when the material went into solution. We ruled out our own handling, traced the problem to the supplier’s site and wrote a report. The supplier was a large company overseas, and our orders were small for them. They admitted the cause quickly and changed the vessels they used. A clear report, showing where the problem came from and why it mattered, made that happen.
Most supplier questionnaires and approved-supplier lists were written with quality in mind. An environmental auditor will now read them too.
The laboratory
New clause 6.3 asks for changes that affect the system to be planned. BSI’s briefing explains that the system has to keep delivering while things change. On a chemical site, something is always changing. The hard part is deciding what counts as a change.
A reformulation counts. I once led a team of chemists, technicians and fire-test experts in replacing a hazardous component in an intumescent sealant. The goal was a safer product, compatible with CPVC pipe. We ran it as product development. Under 6.3, it should also show where the environmental side was considered, and who decided.
A new version of a document counts too. I was once called in after several batches failed the viscosity test. All the components had been signed off, so the cause had to be in the process. The operators all reported an unusual rise in temperature when water was mixed with an acidic material. A few days earlier, the work instruction had been reissued with the order of addition reversed: acid first, then water. Once we restored the original order, the viscosity was back in specification. Nobody had seen the document change as a process change.
You do not need a new system for this. If you already run change control for quality, add one environmental question to the same form, and make sure it is answered by someone who knows what goes to drain.
The stores
The 2026 text adds a note to clause 6.1.2 on the life-cycle stages of a product. BSI suggests that existing users review their environmental aspects again with this in mind.
Most aspects registers list effluent, solvents and packaging as waste. In my experience, much of the avoidable waste is material that expires in the stores. At one site, the incoming inspection of chemical raw materials could sometimes take longer than the shelf life of the chemical itself. We collected the historical test data and certificates of analysis, looked at which failures really linked to material quality, and proposed a simpler inspection plan. It took more than one presentation, but the committee approved it and it stayed in place.
Expired inks are another example. When I was asked to scrap them, I could often gather the evidence for a short shelf-life extension. That meant less waste of critical rare-earth materials. At the time, we called it quality and stock control. A life-cycle view calls it environmental management.
The site itself
Context is not only about the impact a site has on the environment. It is also about how the environment acts on the site. The 2026 text asks every organisation to decide whether climate change is a relevant issue for its environmental system (clause 4.1), and clause 4.2 points out that interested parties can have requirements linked to climate. Both came in with the 2024 amendment and are now part of the standard itself.
For a chemical or process site, the question is practical. Was your cooling water, your solvent store or your stock of temperature-sensitive raw materials designed for the summers you now get? One hot summer is weather. When hot summers become normal, that is climate. It belongs in your context analysis, and from there in the risks and opportunities you plan for under clause 6.1.4.
Your answer can still be that climate change is not relevant to you. That is allowed, as long as you have written down why.
The audit programme
This is the change I would watch most closely. Under clause 9.2.2, each internal audit must now have defined objectives, not only criteria and scope. An audit that happens only because it is on the calendar will be harder to defend.
Before each audit, write down what you want to find out. Are the new supplier controls working? Did the last reformulation go through change control? Is expired stock going down? Then take the answers to management review. BSI describes management review as the point where audit findings and performance figures turn into decisions. Without clear audit objectives, the review has nothing to decide on.
Five questions before your transition audit
- Purchasing: Which suppliers affect our environmental results, and where have we written that down?
- Technical: For the last three changes on site, where did we consider the environment, and who decided?
- Stores: How much material expired last year, and is it on the aspects register?
- Site: Have we written down whether climate change is relevant to us, and which of our processes are sensitive to summer heat?
- Audit: What was the objective of our last internal environmental audit?
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