Two organizations carrying out similar operations can have different environmental performance and still conform to ISO 14001:2004. The standard provides a framework for an effective environmental management system focusing on compliance, pollution prevention, and continual improvement rather than exact operational results. As long as an organization addresses its environmental aspects systematically, it can conform even if its measurements differ from another similar organization.

1. Q. in ISO 14001:2004 international standard , is it acceptable / possible to find two organizations
carrying similar operations, but having different environmental performance , conforms with the
standard requirements ?
Ans. Yes they can.
Explanation to this situation raises from the international standard itself , in its introduction, it states
that the intended use of the standard is to give a set of requirements to the organization on how it can
implement and maintain an effective environmental management system, through managing their
operations on a way that not only complying with the legal and statutory requirements, but as well
ensuring that no negative impact can be resulted from its operations, which simply can be achieve by
preventing of pollution, and working on continual improvement of the applied system, from this base , if
any two organization having the same similar environmental aspect evaluation, however, they are differ
in their environmental parameters measurements, they can both conforms with the standard
requirement, as the standard deals with the whole systematic approach and not the tiny results of the
operations.