Big sur­prise at the Spe­cial Prize Resource Efficiency 

Insti­tut Bauen und Umwelt e.V. (IBU) award­ed even two spe­cial prizes “Resource Effi­cien­cy” at the Ger­man Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Award 2016. 

Procter und GambleFliegl Fahrzeugbau NachhaltigkeitspreisOut­stand­ing strate­gies and mea­sures of com­pa­nies through­out their com­plete val­ue-added chain that lead to min­i­miz­ing the use of mate­ri­als, ener­gy, land and water were award­ed, as well as inno­v­a­tive recy­cling and closed loop approach­es. For the sec­ond-time run­ning, IBU was active­ly involved as a co-oper­a­tion part­ner in the 9th Ger­man Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Award, and togeth­er with the Foun­da­tion Ger­man Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Award e.V. award­ed the “Spe­cial Prize Resource Effi­cien­cy”. This year, two medi­um sized com­pa­nies received the award: Fliegl Fahrzeug­bau for their com­pre­hen­sive resource effi­cien­cy approach and Proc­ter & Gam­ble for play­ing a key part pro­mot­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty in the con­sumer goods industry.

IBU Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Dr Burkhart Lehmann pre­sent­ed the award togeth­er with Pro­fes­sor Dr Gün­ther Bach­mann (Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Ger­man Coun­cil of Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment) to Hel­mut Fliegl (CEO Fliegl Fahrzeug­bau) and Franz-Olaf Kaller­hoff (CEO Proc­ter & Gam­ble). Dur­ing the award cer­e­mo­ny, Burkhart Lehmann empha­sized that the con­struc­tion mate­r­i­al indus­try is already well set regard­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty. For more than 10 years, Envi­ron­men­tal Prod­uct Dec­la­ra­tions of IBU (EPDs) are an envi­ron­men­tal infor­ma­tion sys­tem, dis­clos­ing the envi­ron­men­tal impacts of con­struc­tion prod­ucts with­in the con­text of their con­struc­tion­al use. Accord­ing to Lehmann, it is quite out­stand­ing that: “This sys­tem is based on a vol­un­tary ini­tia­tive of con­struc­tion prod­uct and com­po­nent man­u­fac­tur­ers. They took up on their promis­es to pro­mote sus­tain­able construction“.

A spe­cial high­light: com­pa­nies Inter­face and Evonik were two nom­i­nees for the award “Most Sus­tain­able Enter­prise” show­ing their com­mit­ment to sus­tain­abil­i­ty in the con­struc­tion indus­try and pro­mot­ing trans­par­ent infor­ma­tion poli­cies by cre­at­ing EPDs at IBU. Fur­ther­more, Evonik won the award in the cat­e­go­ry “Research”.

The DGNB award in the cat­e­go­ry “Sus­tain­able Con­struc­tion” was award­ed to the vil­lage Diedorf, Ger­many, for the Schmut­ter­tal-Gym­na­si­um – a build­ing with a plus ener­gy stan­dard, built in a mod­u­lar design in order to adapt to the chang­ing needs for rooms, accord­ing to the ped­a­gog­i­cal draft. DGNB oper­ates a build­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tem and for assess­ing the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of build­ings uses EPDs. In Ger­many, IBU is the most sig­nif­i­cant pro­gramme hold­er for EPDs, its mem­bers com­ing from more than 22 coun­tries. Two of those mem­bers, fis­cher­w­erke and Arbeits­ge­mein­schaft Mauerziegel, took part in this year’s “Spe­cial Award Resource Effi­cien­cy” and there­by sup­port­ed the pro­mo­tion of resource sav­ing meth­ods far beyond the con­struc­tion industry.

The dia­logue forum “Re-think­ing effi­cien­cy – between sav­ing and recy­cling resources” left a lot of room for live­ly dis­cus­sions dur­ing the sus­tain­abil­i­ty day. IBU Chair­man of the Board, Hans Peters, togeth­er with the nom­i­nees for the spe­cial price, dis­cussed sus­tain­able con­struc­tion and resource effi­cien­cy from the per­spec­tive of the dif­fer­ent indus­tries. Also par­tic­i­pat­ing in those dis­cus­sions were Arbeits­ge­mein­schaft Mauerziegel, rep­re­sent­ed by Dr Thomas Fehlhaber, and Dr Eva Schmincke as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Envi­ron­men­tal Asso­ci­a­tions of Euro­pean Stan­dard­iza­tion. It was men­tioned that min­er­al and renew­able resources can­not be eas­i­ly com­pared. The lat­ter appears to be more envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly. “But also renew­able resources are not abun­dant“, explained Dr Thomas Fehlhaber. “You need to con­sid­er that renew­able resources use up land, which is also a resource.“, con­firmed Dr Eva Schmincke. When look­ing at the key objec­tive of resource effi­cien­cy, the dif­fer­ent aspects of sus­tain­abil­i­ty must be tak­en into con­sid­er­a­tion: social, eco­nom­ic and eco­log­ic indi­ca­tors. All par­ties involved agreed that “All aspects need to be looked at in con­junc­tion with each oth­er in order to steer into a more sus­tain­able direction“.

You can find the live record­ing for the Spe­cial Prize Resource Effi­icien­cy here.