Certification
Ensuring Integrity, Impartiality, and Credibility
Enviroscientific is the Third-Party Certification Body for various industry and/or retailer specific environmental sustainability standards. Although these standards are not international standards and therefore not ISO/IEC accredited, Enviroscientific still follows the principles and relevant parts of the ISO/IEC 17021 (2) Standard (Competence requirements for auditing and certification of environmental management systems: SANS 17021-2:2019; ISO/IEC 17021-2: 2016) to determine competence requirements for auditing and certification when conducting environmental sustainability audits. Subsequently the selection of an audit team is based on competence needed for the specific scope of the audit (e.g. Farm/Processing facility) as well as factors such as the context of the organisation to be audited, its environmental risks and the sites where these risks occur. Although it is not necessary for a specific auditor to have all the competence, it is important that the collective competence of the audit team needs to be sufficient to achieve the audit objectives.
Enviroscientific has a formal personnel structure with qualification criteria for each role to ensure quality control and integrity of audits and cover the following aspects (refer to “Enviroscientific Criteria for Certification of Sustainability Auditors” for the minimum criteria for each type of auditor). The following steps are followed: