Environmental guidelines | Umweltbundesamt

Our Environmental Guidelines

Our Environmental Guidelines lay down the manner in which we as an institution endeavor to promote environmental protection.

Preamble

(As of 12/09/2000, last updated by the Federal Environment Agency’s management 11/10/2006)

In the Federal Environment Agency mission statement its staff's objectives are to:

1. protect and maintain natural resources,
2. promote sustainable development and
3. to firmly root environmental protection as a matter of course in everyone's thinking and actions.

We pursue these goals especially within our Agency and resolutely practice what we recommend to others for the promotion of long-term, environmentally compatible development. We implement an environmental management system which our environmental guidelines provide the basis for.

How we see ourselves

1. It is especially in the fulfillment of its professional tasks that the Federal Environment Agency contributes to environmental protection. We adhere to the environmental protection legislation in force and commit ourselves beyond that to continuous improvement of environmental protection in our own activities by setting concrete environmental targets, and we regularly check our performance. When doing so, we take the possibly undesired environmental impacts of our products and services into consideration.

2. The Agency promotes a sense of responsibility and the active involvement of all its staff in efforts to protect the environment and health.

To reduce negative environmental impacts

1. In procurement, we prefer the most environmentally compatible products in light of their manufacture, use, and disposal.
2. We use energy, water, materials, and space efficiently and in an environmentally compatible fashion.
3. We make efforts to avoid waste and where waste is unavoidable, it is recycled or disposed of in an environmentally compatible way.
4. Our business trips are conducted in as an environmentally compatible manner as possible. We recommend our visitors to use public transport.
5. We involve our contractors in our activities to protect the environment and health.

To promote transparency

1. We regularly conduct in-house environmental checks, make their results public, and the derived measures are stated in an environmental impact report which then exposes us to public discussion.