HFSY357 Environmental Sustainability Report: ISO 14001 & Singapore

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of environmental sustainability, focusing on the ISO 14001 standards and their role in guiding organizations towards sustainable practices. It examines the framework provided by ISO 14001, including the importance of balancing environmental, economic, and social factors. The report then delves into Singapore's environmental legislation, highlighting key laws and regulations designed to protect the environment, land, and wildlife. It explores the impact of these regulations on organizational policies, emphasizing the need for companies to adopt green initiatives and participate in waste management programs. The report also outlines the internal procedures of environmental auditing, including planning, auditor selection, classification of findings, and follow-up actions. It emphasizes the importance of continuous improvement and self-assessment to ensure effective environmental management. Finally, the report concludes by summarizing the key areas for improvement within existing sustainability frameworks.

Running Head: ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY
ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note:

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ISO 14001 Standards 2015
The program of ISO 14001:2015, was initiated to manage the factors of environment and
the organizations to acquire the knowledge about activities supporting sustainability. The
abbreviation ISO stands for International Organization for Standardization. The root of this
program is grounded on a proper balance between environment, economy, and society of a
particular area (Pesce et al. 2018). It consider the concept of sustainable development as a
desired goal to be achieved by all the organization with proper alignment between the identified
three pillars of sustainability.
The purpose of initiation of ISO is provide a framework to the organizations to reserve
the environment and addressing the changing condition of it along with balancing the
requirement of socio-economy. It separates the requirements make an organization able to
achieve the intended outcome the organization set to manage the environmental system (Zutshi
& Creed, 2015). This systematic approach aim can lead the organizations to achieve the
sustainable goal by performing the mentioned activities –
 Protection of the environment with preventive attitude to mitigate the negative
environmental influences.
 Addressing the potential negative impact of the environmental situation within the
organization (Baek, 2017).
 Proper assistance to the organization to fulfill the obligation of compliance.
 Improvement of the environmental activities.
 Continuously influence the systems of the organization irrespective of products and
service, distribution and manufacturing, and others to provide a sustainable impact on
the environment.
 Proper interaction on environmental sustainability and related program with the
interested and educated professionals (Lee et al., 2015).
This standards provides a framework on which an organization can plan for an
environmental policy.
Outline of an environmental policy
The organization is fully committed to practice a sound stewardship for environmental
activities. It will promote a healthy and safety workforce culture for the employees as well as for
the neighboring community (Sim & Putuhena, 2015). These commitments will be valuable for
members from the top management body and all the other levels of employees within this
organization (Asdrubali et al., 2015). All the existing and new employees of this organization are
mandate to abide by all the mentioned aspects of the company’s environmental policy
statement.
 Mitigate and expand all the suitable federal, local, state, and organization environmental
health and safety standards.
 Generate a workplace without any observable hazards and proper maintenance of safe
working situations for all the employees of the organization.
 Close observation of all the facilities available for pollution prevention.
 Taking part in the recycling procedure at the greatest extent to reduce the impact of
environmental hazards.
 Striving for continuous improvement for the commitment the organization has set for all
the employees of the organization.
 Promptly evaluation of all the measured activities for environmental sustainability and
protect the world from declining.

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 Provide enough knowledge at the time of training and development for both the existing
and new employees of the organization.
 Utilizing agents from the university regulatory body to provide assistance for developing
the solution regarding environment related problems. The organization will promote the
basic cooperation between the employees and a public figure to develop economic
feasibility among the organization.
Singapore legislation for environmental sustainability
The environmental law of Singapore is amended by both the federal and state body of the
country. It is aimed to protect the environment, land, beauty, wildlife, pollution, degradation of
forest, and saving the endangered species. This law and regulation provides an individual the
right to perform legal actions or appeal to the court to demand protection and revisions of the
public and private activities of the organization for the sake of environmental sustainability
(Hashemi, Karimi & Tavana, 2015). During the year of 198, the World Conservation Union and
United Nations Environmental Protection Agency launched a program to initiate some strategy
supporting the sustainability law. This activities include
 Planning a developmental control for land
 Planning for sustainable utility of the recyclable resources to eliminate the waste
production.
 Prevention of the rate of air and water pollution
 Management of the risky substances
 Disposal of waste
 Preservation of the species of all the levels of ecosystem
All the mentioned aspects are introduced to generate more comprehensive and protection
law considering the previous mentioned aspects (Wu et al., 2014). The additional space
mentioned within the regulation to control the environmental sustainability include
 Applying some precautionary principle for the use of best technologies to control the
pollution.
 Economic incentives considering the tax rates and other charges.
 Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) should be incorporated within the new or
existing environmental policies.
 Conducting internal environmental audit with periodical order.
 Evaluation and monitoring of the internal environmental auditing to measure the
efficiency of the planned environmental policy (Paillé et al., 2014).
Impact of the regulation on organizational policy
All the regulations set by both the federal and state government can have a direct impact
on the organizational management of sustainability. According to the ISO 14001 program the
following impacts can be observed within the organizational performance.
 The concept of making Singapore a green country can be achieved by a strict
adherences to the mentioned rules and regulations (Hung & Chou, 2013). There are
many companies are taking fruitful initiative to control the waste management and other
mode of sustainability. More than thousands of the organizations are communicating for
government assistance to lower down the utility of energy and water.
 Companies should take part in activities to become one of the green group companies of
Singapore. The proposed policy claims that enough knowledge will be provided on the
subject of maintenance of environmental sustainability (Lim et al., 2013). Hence, the
management committee will make alliance with government and university agents to

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create a fruitful training and development program for all the employees. Along with this,
the agents will help the organizations to identify the areas to implement the sustainable
actions with proper initiatives including shifting the business model.
Internal procedure of Environmental auditing
The procedure of environmental auditing refers to essential management of the initiative
towards environmental security with proper measuring tools with proper alliance with the ISO
standards. The types of audits are determined by the categories of standards (Acciaro et al.,
2014). All the corporate industry of Singapore are successfully recognizing the value of
environmental aspects and enhancing their performance with the mode of partnership with
various interested third parties. The process of environmental auditing includes the following
activities
 Investigation
 Analysis
 Identification
These activities are helpful to improve the activities related to human resource. It helps to
reduce adverse upshot of existing environmental policies of any organization (Zutshi & Creed,
2015).
Planning of an internal environmental audit
Before planning for fruitful activities of environmental audit, the organization must clarify the
objectives of the audit program.
 Verifying the environmental policy with regards to the ISO 14001 standards.
 Identifying the issues that is standing against the proposed standards.
 Analyzing the systematic procedure of the performance of environmental sustainability
programs (Wu et al., 2014).
 Providing definition about the geographical boundaries. For instance, onsite or offsite
location of the organization.
 Making the environmental audit a voluntary event by mandating the preparatory review
as mentioned in the ISO 14001.
 Annual performance of the organization on the subject of environmental sustainability.
 Preparing the stakeholders to carry forward the entire program of environmental
sustainability (Baek, 2017).
Selection of the auditors
One of the major role of the company to identify proper personnel to be considered as the
auditor for internal environmental audit (Sim & Putuhena, 2015). The key personnel to be
considered as the environmental auditor are
 Employees
 Employers
 Suppliers

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Classification of audit findings
After the preparation of internal audit, some data will be gathered by the stakeholders for
analyzing the ultimate outcome of the environmental policy. There are three types of audit
findings with different usable outcomes for the organization.
 Non-conformance – This group of auditors are known as environment management
audits aimed to verify the proper alignment between the organizational goals and
environmental policy (Pesce et al. 2018).
 Observation – the functional team of audit management are associated with the
responsibility of observing the performance of the participants of sustainable programs.
 Improvement monitors – The ISO 14001 mentioned this findings will provide the
perception for the existing employees and their activeness within the entire audit
program.
Follow-up actions the entire audit program
 The auditors firstly verify the entire program of the internal environmental program to
identify the areas required to imply proper change.
 The auditors should analyse the systematic procedure the organization is taking to
address all the issues mentioned within the program of ISO 14001.
 The auditors should perform a periodic analysis to restructure the framework of
environmental sustainable policy (Wu et al., 2014).
 There should be a documented version of the policy to keep the employees concerned
about the process of environmental sustainability.
Conclusion
After proper verification of the existing sustainable policy, the auditors will gather a
handful of areas to improve and incorporate further changes within the existing framework. This
will be a procedure of self-assessment by the experts on the domain of environmental
sustainability.

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