ISO 14001 certification confirms MBS Nordic as an environmentally-friendly supplier

MBS Nordic AB, one of the leading Nordic region chemical distributors and a member company of the Royal Vopak group, has added the ISO 14001 Environmental Management System (EMS) certification to its existing ISO 9002.

The ISO 14001 audit, which covers the company’s operational centres in Göteborg, Stockholm, Malmö, Oslo, and Helsinki, was carried out by Det Norske Veritas in December 2001 and was the culmination of almost a year of preparation by all management and staff of MBS Nordic.

Christer Lundblad, Managing Director, MBS Nordic: “Obtaining the ISO 14001 certification was very much driven by our customers, who increasingly choose suppliers that are certified according to an environmental management system. We have always been an environmentally conscious company, so it was a relatively straightforward step to build on our existing practices and procedures to meet the ISO standard and help our customers to continue to make us their supplier of choice.”

An Environmental Management System (EMS) is a systematic approach to dealing with the environmental aspects of an organisation. It is a tool that enables an organisation to control the impact of its activities, products or services on the natural environment. Although there are several types of EMS, MBS Nordic chose ISO 14001 as it provided a logical and efficient fit with the company’s ISO 9002 quality management system implemented in 1993.

“The process started with identification of the environmental impact of the company’s activities,” says Ann-Christin Ericsson, MBS Nordic Project Leader for the EMS programme. “Three working groups were formed to analyse the environmental aspects of our transportation, products and back office activities. All elements were listed and prioritised according to the significance of their potential impact on the environment. This then formed the basis for setting our environmental objectives and created the platform on which to build our environmental policy.”

As a distributor of a broad range of chemicals and a company which is dedicated to serving customers needs, the MBS Nordic environmental policy is clearly customer focused and designed to help them to protect the environment, as well as addressing the company’s contribution to its protection.

In addition to compliance with relevant environmental legislation, MBS Nordic is committed to continuous process and procedural improvement, illustrated in its stated objectives as follows:

• Environmental objectives for products

o MBS Nordic shall to a greater extent offer its customers alternatives to the products that are most dangerous to health and the environment. The advice regarding the choice of organic solvents will be increased and improved.

• Environmental objectives for suppliers

o The environmental status of each supplier will be included in the overall assessment of suppliers in order to reduce the products’ negative impact on the environment.

• Environmental objectives regarding waste

o MBS Nordic shall work actively in order to reduce the waste emanating from obsolete or unsalable products.

• Environmental objectives regarding transports

o MBS Nordic shall work actively in order to reduce the negative impact on the environment due to transport of products.

• Environmental objectives regarding travelling in work

o MBS Nordic shall work actively in order to reduce the negative impact on the environment from business travel.

Through its implementation of this policy, MBS Nordic will continue to make itself a valuable distribution partner.