Environmental Award for Companies in Baden-Wurttemberg 2012

Date of the award ceremony: 2012

Michael Koch GmbH awarded nomination certificate

Since 1993, Baden-Wurttemberg’s Environmental Award for Companies recognizes companies for outstanding achievements in the field of environmental protection and sustainable business practices. In 2012, this award was awarded for the 15th time in the categories “Industry”, “Crafts” and “Trade and Services”. In addition, the Jury’s “Energy Excellence” award was presented for the first time in 2012.

A jury of business representatives, environmental and conservation groups as well as state departments, consisting of eight-members decides on prize and nomination worthiness. We are proud to be among the eight nominees in the category “Industry.” As part of the award ceremony on November 26 at the “Neues Schloss” in Stuttgart, we and our activities in the field of environmental protection were honoured with a nomination certificate.

Since the company was founded, the topic of environmental protection and sustainability is an integral part of our corporate philosophy, and it is implemented in all operations and in product development. For the past ten years, our environmental management system is certified according to the European EMAS regulation.

The judges were induced to nominate us, inter alia based on following excellent and outstanding achievements:

> Reduction of production-related energy and consumption of resources
The installation of a heat pump to heat the building reduced the gas consumption by about 85%. The entire electrical energy is obtained from a supplier who guarantees complete renewable-energy production. To reduce the consumption of packaging materials a rotation-based system for cardboard packaging was introduced with one of the main suppliers.

> Employee involvement
The training project “Energy Controlling” collects the energy and water consumption figures on a monthly basis. Regularly scheduled training sessions inform all employees of new saving potentials and innovations in the field of environmental protection. This achieves a high level of awareness and motivation to accomplish environmentally friendly and economic behaviour.

> Product development
With our product range of energy storage systems and braking resistors for the electric drive technology of stationary applications in engineering, we want to pass on a portion of our environmental awareness to our customers. The Dynamic Energy Storage, which stores the electric brake energy of the motors ready for the next process of acceleration, is capable of saving up to 50 percent of energy required.

The fact that economy and ecology are not contradictory, but that they can easily be combined, was proven by all the nominees. The award recognizes our past work and is also an incentive to pursue our ambitious goals for the coming years. We hope that our actions will motivate others to act in an environmentally sustainable manner.