Our own servers in Europe · GDPR · Support in your language
ES EN CA
Let's talk

Module 1 of 7 · ISO 14001:2015 · Clause 4

Context of the organization

The environmental system starts by understanding which conditions of the surroundings affect the company, and which interested parties hold environmental expectations of it.

Content reviewed on

Internal and external environmental context

Covers environmental conditions that can be affected by the organization or affect it —climate, resource availability, local biodiversity— plus internal factors such as culture or available resources.

Interested parties and environmental requirements

Neighbours, environmental authorities, customers with green procurement criteria, insurers... you need to identify which ones have requirements relevant to the system, including applicable legal requirements.

Scope of the environmental management system

Defines which facilities, activities, products and services the system covers, taking a life-cycle perspective into account where applicable.

Environmental system processes

The process map, with its associated environmental aspects, is the foundation the rest of the standard's clauses build on.

What an auditor usually asks for

  • An environmental context document (internal and external) reviewed annually
  • A list of interested parties with their environmental requirements
  • A scope statement for the system with a life-cycle perspective
  • A process map with the associated environmental aspects

How to cover context in Kimobox

  1. 1Document the environmental context as just another record in the system, with a review date and an owner.
  2. 2Log environmental interested parties and their requirements in a versioned table.
  3. 3Draw the process map with Kimobox's process editor, flagging the environmental aspect of each process.
  4. 4State the environmental system's scope on the EMS record, linked to the documentation that justifies it.

Kimobox's process map lets you flag which process generates which environmental aspect, no separate spreadsheet needed.

See how the process map works in Kimobox

Where each figure comes from

References to the official text in force. If a standard is revised, this page is updated and the review date says so.

  1. ISO 14001:2015 — Environmental management systems. Requirements ISO · 2015 ed., with Amd 1:2024
  2. Regulation (EC) No 1221/2009 (EMAS) EUR-Lex · 25 November 2009
Next → Leadership