In 2011 the ISO/TC 207/SC 2 – Environmental auditing sub-committee established an ad hoc group to gather information on current developments on auditing/verification of publicly available environmental and sustainability reports. Status reports were given at the 2012 and 2013 meetings. In 2013 the ad hoc group decided to conduct a survey to gather further information on the market needs for a standard on the topic of verification of environmental sustainability reports for discussion at its upcoming meeting in Panama on May 27, 2014.

TC 207 is seeking your assistance in obtaining broad participation in this survey. The survey can be accessed via the following link:https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/RCBL6D5. The survey will be open until May 2, 2014. We understand that this is a short timeframe for capturing this information but the deadline was established by ISO to make sure responses were available in time for consideration at the Panama meeting.

To obtain a statistically diverse and representative sample we are requesting that you consider passing this survey to other experts and stakeholders that you are familiar with personally.  We are hoping to get responses from a variety of organizations, based upon their environmental risk, number of employees, size and type (small, medium, and large as well light, medium, and heavy manufacturing), as well as those in the public and/or private sector.

Day four of ISO 14001 Lead Auditor is going well.  A great group of folks in the class makes my job here in DC enjoyable.  From time to time I wonder if ISO 14001 is destined for jettison to the ash heap of sustainability irrelevance.  I sometimes question if others will continue to believe as I do that an ISO 14001 environmental management systems is a good way to manage the plant part of sustainability’s triple bottom line.

But teaching this class often restores my confidence that ISO 14001 will continue to be relevant for the foreseeable future.  Students continue to appreciate learning the fundamentals of environmental aspects, impacts, significance, auditing including the relationship between audit criteria, evidence, findings and conclusions.   I also believe that the current revision process is tracking well toward delivering an improved model for environmental management systems and I am looking forward to teach this course for the revised standard next year.