An ISO 14001 assessment of waste disposal activities of health facilities in the City of Makati

ISO 14001 is a standard which helps the company manage, measure and improve the environmental aspects of its activities and processes such as waste disposal. It was developed based on ISO 9000, which is a quality control standard. Companies that are ISO 9001 certified or are undergoing certification are more likely to have the management structure in place to comply with the environment management system (EMS) standard. To see if this is also true among facilities administering health services, health facilities in Makati City (N=9) were assessed individually and collectively using an EMS checklist patterned after the Global Environmental Management Initiative (GEMI) Self-Assessment Checklist. The participating health facilities through its representatives identified their compliance with the EMS standard for the waste disposal activities. These health facilities were individually assessed to identify in which elements of their EMS they are good at and in which they need to improve on, and collectively assessed so as to determine the EMS structure that will best comply highly with the ISO 14001 standard for benchmarking purposes. It was found that the highly complying health facilities were more reactive as to their EMS approaches and that there is no one element of an EMS that these facilities focus more on. ISO 9001 certified health facilities and those undergoing certification are found to have the management structure in place to comply with the ISO 14001 standard. Facility EMS shortcomings as well as recommendations for improvements and suggestions for research are discussed