Regional Waste Systems (RWS), Portland, Maine, is the first municipally owned and operated solid waste management organization in the U.S. to meet the international recognized ISO 14001 standards and to receive certification from the American National Standards Institute-Registrar Accreditation Board (ANSI-RAB).
The ISO 14001 standard requires companies to voluntarily develop and implement a comprehensive environmental management system (EMS) that includes a self-imposed system of checks and balances covering 18 specific areas, including monitoring and measurement, documentation, operational controls and communication.
“The auditors recognized that environmental protection is paramount at RWS,” Norman E. Justice, Jr., says. Justice is chairman of the board of directors at RWS.
RWS operates a waste-to-energy plant and spent two years implementing and EMS modeled after ISO 14001. An audit conducted in March by Advanced Waste Management Systems, Chattanooga, Tenn., found that RWS met each element of the ISO 14001 standard. RWS recently received a certificate of registration from the ANSI-RAB, the governing body for ISO 14001 in the U.S. To ensure that RWS maintains EMS, audits will take place every six months.
Only four of the approximate 110 municipal waste incinerators in the U.S. have ISO 14001 certification, Mark Arienti, the environmental manager at RWS, says. He adds that of these four ISO 14001-certified companies, RWS is the only company that is not privately held.
RWS is a non-profit solid waste management corporation that is owned and controlled by 27 cities and towns and governed by a 28-member board consisting of officials appointed from member towns.