ISSA Executive Vice-President Jim Costalos and ISSA Quality Manager James Slattery are spearheading ISSA’s Green Agenda with a visible link between the two areas.

In a significant and timely development, ISSA is proud to launch the GREEN ISSA initiative, which falls in line with significant updates to our ISSA Quality Standard.  We recognise how important environmental affairs are and the impact it is having across the world.

Jim Costalos, ISSA Executive Vice President, has been the driving force in putting this initiative in place. Working closely with James Slattery, ISSA Quality Manager and Yvonne Paul, ISSA Head of Administration.

Mr Costalos said: “We all have a duty to ensure we act in a responsible manner towards environmental matters and that we all conform to environmental laws, regulations, standards and other requirements.

“ISSA acknowledges that our industry is experiencing very difficult times during the global pandemic. Therefore we have taken the opportunity to incorporate the GREEN ISSA initiative into our highly successful ISSA Quality Standard in a further bid to assist members with greater competitive advantage.”

The ISSA Quality Standard has been updated to take into account the key requirements of:

•    ISO 9001:2015 covering the Quality Management System
•    ISO 14001-2015 covering Environmental Aspects
•    ISO 45001 covering Occupational Health and Safety Management
•    ISO 22000-2005 covering the Food Supply Industry.
•    In addition the ISM Code and ISPS Code have been taken into account.

Only the key parts of these Codes and Standards, which are directly applicable to the ship supply industry, have been included ensuring that such requirements are part of the routine operations of the applicable ISSA member.

This is a competitive and very cost-effective alternative to becoming ISO certified with multiple standards.

James Slattery, detailing the changes, said: “The ISSA Quality Standard has been updated and has amalgamated key fundamentals taken from ISO 14001-2015 and ISO 22000-2005.

“We feel this puts ISSA Quality certified members in a strong position for the environmental challenges that lie ahead,” he said.

In this current climate and financial struggles across the world, ISSA still wants to continue to strive to set high quality standards. ISSA Quality membership is a feasible option for large organisations as well as small