EnviroServ awarded ISO 45001 certification

EnviroServ Waste Management has successfully transitioned to the new International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 45001:2018 from the former British Standard Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series (OHSAS) 18001.

EnviroServ Waste Management has successfully transitioned to the new International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 45001:2018 from the former British Standard Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series (OHSAS) 18001.

The new management system ISO 45001 concentrates on the interaction between an organisation and its business environment, while focussing managing occupational health and safety hazards and risks.

The benefits of the new system for EnviroServ include standardising our approach to health and safety management within the company. We have frameworks that are established to assist us in identify hazards and risks in the workplace and addressing them before they become problematic. The main aim of a system such as this is to reduce accidents and incidents within the workplace and ensure our most valuable resource, our employees, work safely and return safely home to their families at the end of their workday. It also aligns our policies and procedures to international best practice.

The new ISO standard has been developed to replaces OHSAS 18001, to which we were previously certified. ISO 45001:2018 was published on March 12 2018, and OHSAS 18001 was officially withdrawn on the same date three years later.

ISO 45001specifies requirements for an occupational health and safety (OH&S) management system, and gives guidance for its use, to enable the company to provide safe and healthy workplaces by preventing work-related injury and ill health, as well as by proactively improving our OH&S performance.

ISO 45001 helps the company achieve the intended outcomes of the OH&S management system. Consistent with the company’s OH&S policy, the intended outcomes of an OH&S management system include:

• continual improvement of OH&S performance;
• fulfilment of legal requirements and other requirements;
• achievement of OH&S objectives.

We are committed to providing a workplace environment which is free from health, safety and environmental risks. We do this through developing and implementing various management systems, just one of which ISO 45001.

In preparation for the audit, policies, procedures and workplace practices were changed and aligned with the requirements of the new standard.

Three auditors from the SABS evaluated the company’s compliance to the new standard. At the end of the two-day audit, they presented the company with only four minor findings and a comment saying it is one of the best management systems they have “had the pleasure of auditing”. We are extremely proud of our new certification and will continue to focus on raising the waste game.