Environmental evolution
March 1st 2008

The company that has been supplying scientific instruments since 1799 and whose customers have included Dr Livingstone and Charles Darwin and has now achieved its own evolutionary triumph. Casella Measurement has just achieved ISO 14001certification; being the first company participating in the regionwide Business Environmental Training Initiative Plus (BETI+) to do so.

The driver for Casella going for recognition to the international environmental management systems Standard, ISO 14001, came mainly from its customers. While certification isn't yet a requirement to tender for contracts, Casella firmly believes that it will be, particularly where larger companies and government bodies are concerned.

Mark Thomson, environmental officer, explains: "We decided we wanted to pre-empt the market demand, and gain a competitive edge by establishing ourselves as an environmentally sound business." Casella took a slightly different approach to the training and support offered by BETI+ by starting with a gap analysis to identify which areas needed to be addressed prior to starting to the course. "We were then in a position to make the most of the training and support on offer," says Mark Thomson (Environmental Officer). "We used BETI+ to finetune and modify what we'd already done and this really added value to the process for us." It also gave Mark a greater understanding of how environmental management systems work in practice, which resulted in him passing the demanding CIEH Level 3 Environmental Management course with a Credit.

Short environmental awareness presentations were carried out for everyone. "People are generally aware of their own environmental impacts – they're switching off lights and recycling at home. We aimed to make them bring this behaviour into work," says Mark.

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