
It involves environmental management and requires the businesses seeking this standard to behave in a socially responsible manner. It allows them to manage the impact of their business on their environment in a better way and to carry out more environmentally friendly management practices.
ISO 14001: important certification
The fact of wanting to get an ISO 14001 standard will bring many advantages to the company. But the business has to engage in many long term steps before being granted this certification. It can only be obtained after an audit has been carried out by a certified independent organisation which has given its agreement. This is the procedure the Barriere group undertook in 2010 when it wanted to adopt a policy of sustainable development for all of its establishments and which has just obtained the European ISO 14001 certification. This allowed them to control their consumption. So, electricity consumption for the whole of the Barriere Group has definitely decreased by the equivalent of the consumption of a town of 20 000 inhabitants. Great efforts have also been put in place as regards the use of paper which has decreased by 32 tons.To get such results, the Barriere Group has had to rethink its methods of consumption and to educate its employees differently. It asked them to adopt ecologically responsible behaviours such as automatically turning off lights and computers when they no longer need to use them and the same for taps and to recycle rubbish… The Barriere Group has also formed partnerships with charities. It has joined with the charity “Les Bouchons d’Amour” by collecting almost 100kg of bottle tops which enables equipment to be bought for disabled people. Other links are also in the pipeline such as cleaning beaches, protecting wildlife.