Our environmental management system was recertified to ISO 14001:2015 on 21 April. The audit ran over two days, covered the depot and three client sites, and recorded no non-conformities. The certificate is valid until 20 April 2029, with a surveillance audit each spring.
We have held the certificate since 2020, and the honest reason we bothered in the first place was that two clients asked for it during a tender. The reason we keep it is different: it forces us to count things we would otherwise estimate. Litres of concentrate, not bottles bought. Kilometres driven per contract, not fuel cards totalled at the year end.
What the auditor looked at
The site visits were to a food plant, a distribution centre and a business park — chosen by the auditor, not by us. On each one the questions were the same: where is the chemical stored, who doses it, what happens to the waste water, and can you show me the consignment note for the last hazardous waste collection.
The chemical store was checked in detail, including the bunding, the ventilation and whether the safety data sheets on the wall matched the products actually on the shelf. They did, which has not always been the case.
The two observations
Neither observation was a finding against the standard; both were things the auditor thought would eventually become one.
- Consignment notes are filed too late. They reach the client's environmental folder within the same week, but our own copy sometimes sits in a van for a fortnight. From May the note is photographed at collection and filed the same day.
- Vehicle mileage is recorded per van, not per contract. That makes it impossible to see which round is drifting. We are adding the contract number to the journey log from the start of the next quarter.
The numbers behind it
Concentrate use fell from 4 180 litres in 2023 to 3 610 in 2025, while the contract base grew. Almost all of that comes from dosing by pump and dispenser rather than by eye, a change we finished rolling out across every site in 2020. The two new ride-on machines meter their own dosing, so we expect a further fall this year — and if we do not get one, that will be in next year's report too.