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International environmental management standard advances Development of international trade guidelines in areas such as environmental management and auditing and life cycle analysis has progressed following a recent meeting in Norway. The ISO 14000 standards are expected to be issued in July 1996 by the International Organization for Standardization in Geneva, Switzerland. At the third meeting of ISO Technical Committee 207 in Oslo this July, the key "specification standard" for environmental management systems (EMS) moved ahead to the draft international standard phase. Companies can use the specification standard to declare that they are registered as conforming to the EMS standard ISO 14001. Many observers believe that international standards will allow business to face growing environmental protec-
tion pressures, help minimize legal and financial liabilities, and reduce compliance costs. Technical Committee 207, which has six subcommittees and 17 working groups, is charged with developing some 25 standards contained in eight documents. The eight documents consist of the following: • an EMS guidance; • the EMS certification standard, which provides the core requirements for a system that can be certified or registered by an external third party; • environmental performance evaluation, which allows a company to measure its environmental performance against specified criteria; • environmental auditing requirements and guidelines for management systems and qualifi-
cation criteria for auditors; • life cycle assessment; • environmental labeling; • environmental product standards, which recommend environmental awareness in product design; and • terms and definitions. The next TC207 meeting will be held in Durban, South Africa, in May 1996. By that time, countries will have commented on the draft standards. According to George Nowacki of the British Standards Institute in London, it is not yet known to what extent the ISO 14000 specification will satisfy the European Union's Eco-Management and Audit Scheme. A working group is debating this complication and will decide whether and how the two schemes should fit together. —MARIA BURKE, London
Unified environmental statute concept gains support Superfund. The Clean Air Act. The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. These laws could become history, not because of antienvironmental legislation, but because of new efforts to advance a single, all-encompassing environmental statute. Organizations such as the National Environmental Policy Institute (NEPI) and the National Academy for Public Administration (NAPA) have proposed a single statute as a way to unify the many mediaspecific environmental laws. The idea was given new credibility in May when senators Christopher Bond (R-MO) and Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) asked EPA "to develop a comprehensive, multimedia legislative proposal." Bond and Mikulski are chair and ranking minority member, respectively, of the Appropriations subcommittee, which controls EPA's funding. The report is due in November. "While there is a long history of partial efforts, this is the first effort that's really made it to the national level," said Terry Davies,
director of the Center for Risk Management at Resources for the Future. In their letter Bond and Mikulski cited a NAPA report published in April discussing inefficiencies in EPA regulatory procedures. On August 8, a report by NEPI, a policy advocacy group headed by former U.S. representative from Pennsylvania Don Ritter, also called for a unified law. Long a single-statute advocate, Davies, who participated in both the NAPA and NEPI efforts, said the time was right for a single statute to replace the host of media-specific laws. "There is a growing consensus that the existing system isn't working." Passing a unified statute "would be a lot easier than we suspected 10 years ago," Ritter said. Many current trends such as pollution prevention and alternatives to command-and-control enforcement require multimedia approaches, which is the hallmark of the statute, he said. Ritter's proposal would establish national goals and priorities
with the help of regions, states, and localities; include a strong science and risk-based component; and enforce the statute through performance standards and goals. A unified statute would require a back-to-the-states approach, said Ritter. And it requires an end to EPA's current media-based structure, he said. "As long as you have a separate air office, water office, and RCRA office, you're going to be inefficient." The EPA group conducting the study is looking at a spectrum of possible plans with a single statute at one end and incremental changes at the other, according to David Ziegele, head of the work group and director of the Office of Underground Storage Tanks. Ritter doubts the EPA effort will result in a unified statute because, he said, it would decentralize the Agency. "Some good things will come out of it," he said. "But basically it's a conflict of interest to do away with yourself in the name of efficiency." —DANIEL SHANNON
VOL. 29, NO. 10. 1995/ ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY • 4 5 5 A
