Avaliação da influência da certificação ISO 14001 no cotidiano dos funcionários de uma empresa certificada

Abstract

Environmental education is a relatively new concept in humanity, created in order to raise awareness of environmental problems caused by the lifestyle that today's society has taken. Environmental awareness was stimulated, primarily, aimed at minimizing impacts caused by industrial and other activities that exploit natural resources and, subsequently, the responsibility fell on the entire society. Therefore, it is necessary to educate the whole society to develop sustainable habits in their daily, both in their family and professional atmosphere. In the professional context, some companies develop environmental management systems to meet the legal requirements, reduce waste, using green marketing, among other goals. Some of these systems are standardized and companies that meet the standards, may obtain certification if they desire. In a certification process, the organization is responsible for providing environmental training to their employees, because these have a fundamental role in the achievement of the targets set for the organization and the more prepared and aware of their actions are, will more easily comply with the goals of the system. Thus, it is possible that employees are made aware not only substandard, but that can absorb the concepts of environmental education and extend them to their daily lives. In order to observe this hypothesis, this study compared the environmental practices of everyday life for employees of a company with ISO 14001 certification with employees of a company without environmental certification, through the application of a questionnaire of daily habits of consumption, recycling, segregation of waste, among other customs of environmental relevance. Within the company with environmental certification, there was no significant difference between the responses of employees with different education levels, gender, age or length of service to the issues evaluated, as there was no significant difference between the company's employees without certification to the same questions. Compared the responses of employees certified company with which has no certification, no significant difference was observed statistically between groups of each company, with a significant value of p = 0.127.