ISO 14001 Certification and Environmental Performance in Quebec's Pulp and Paper Industry

This paper tests whether adopting the international norm ISO 14001 significantly impacts environmental performance in Quebec's pulp and paper industry. Using monthly data collected from 37 plants between 1997 and 2003, we show that: i) ISO certification does not lead to a reduction in total suspended solid emissions or the total quantity of rejected process water; ii) discharge of biological oxygen demand appears to be significantly lower in the first year following certification; iii) this latter impact does not appear to last beyond the one-year window. We further show that, contrary to the group of plants that did not adopt the ISO norm, the adopting plants did not experience a significant negative trend in emissions over our sample period.