elobau receives major environmental award

elobau is the recipient of the 'Environmental Award for Companies 2020' from the state of Baden-Württemberg in Germany.

Since 1993, the Environment Ministry of Baden-Württemberg has been honouring companies and the self-employed from industry, trade, handicrafts and services that have performed ecologically exceptional and highly skilled work for the promotion of environmental protection within operations and environmentally focused company management.

This year it was elobau’s turn to be recognised for its work in this field, with the award in the category of ‘Industrial company with more than 250 employees’.

Environmental protection

In particular, the environmental award honours the central role that environmental protection plays in all the elobau business’s departments, from energy efficiency and sustainable electricity generation using renewable technologies to climate-neutral production since 2010, right through to a reduction of transport routes.

This is because elobau – whose sustainable solutions are in the areas of operator controls, machine safety, level measurement and sensor technology – produces exclusively in Germany, builds many of its required components itself, and sources 96% of the purchased parts from the EU, with suppliers also being checked, in terms of their environmental compliance.

Greenhouse Gas Protocol

When producing the carbon footprint according to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG), both direct emissions and also indirect emissions from upstream and downstream processes (scope 3), such as daily employee commutes to work, are taken into account.

“We are a concerned company, and take responsibility for our ecological and social impact,” states Michael Hetzer, executive director at elobau. “This award from the state of Baden-Württemberg will give us even greater motivation in pursuing this objective. We are convinced that a healthy environment and a well-balanced society are the basis for long-term economic success.”

Education and community projects

The evolution of elobau from a family business to a foundation company in 2016 was also predicated on these core assumptions. The elobau foundation funds education and community projects with a fixed proportion of the profits from elobau GmbH & Co. KG. Since assuming an ECG (economy for the common good) business model, elobau states that it is the first company in the electronics and machine building sector to produce an externally audited ‘common good balance sheet’.

Festive event

The awards ceremony took place as part of a festive event by Minister-President Winfried Kretschmann and Environment Minister Franz Untersteller in the White Hall of the New Palace in Stuttgart. The award comes with prize money of €10,000, to be spent on further environmental protection measures.