Sustainable Development and Pollutant Outcomes: The Case of ISO 14001 in Korea

ISO 14001 is one of the best known and most common globally adopted environmental management system-based standards under current sustainable development schemes. This paper investigates the impact of ISO 14001 on the level of pollutant emissions across manufacturing facilities in Korea. The level of pollutant emissions in 22 ISO 14001-certified facilities in Korea is compared with that of 52 non-certified ones. Through statistical analyses based on the Shapiro-Wilk and Mann-Whitney U tests, it is concluded that ISO 14001-certified facilities and non-certified facilities are not significantly different in terms of the level of pollutant emissions produced. These statistical results indicate that ISO 14001 may not contribute to the actual improvement of environmental performance in Korea.