Micronas awarded the Ecological Transport Seal for the second time (R 0401)
The Micronas environmental transport project receives another award from the City of Freiburg
Freiburg, 22nd September 2004 - Together with 20 other Freiburg companies and municipal departments, Micronas GmbH was awarded the City of Freiburg's Ecological Transport Seal for the second time last Thursday. Managing Director, Klaus Heberle, received the certificate in person from Mayor Dr. Matthias Schmelas. With this award, the City of Freiburg pays tribute to companies who actively support their employees in opting for an environmentally-friendly journey to work.
To draw even more attention to the "Environmentally-compatible Travel to Work" team - an intercompany team that has existed since 1991 - delegations of cyclists from the companies involved organised a demonstration tour through the city center to the town hall prior to the award of the Ecological Transport Seal. This additionally served to highlight one of the options that exists for environment-friendly commuting.
At Micronas, a producer of microchips located in the industrial zone in the north of Freiburg, the Works Council started to look into ways of encouraging employees to switch to environmentally-friendly means of transport back in 1990. Taking the ideas put forward in an employee survey, the Works Council drew up a comprehensive environmentally-friendly transport concept, which has been jointly supported and further developed by the company and the Works Council since 1991. And, in the meantime, it has also served as an example for a large number of other Freiburg companies.
"We are proud of the development of this intercompany initiative set up by Micronas", stresses Klaus Heberle. "And we do, of course, hope that it will continue to operate just as successfully in the future too." Head of Council, Walter Baireuther, adds: "Right from the start, the company not only backed our ideas but gave us financial support too. And it is thanks to the cooperation between the management and the Works Council that the many campaigns launched at Micronas have been so successful. "
Two aspects of the Micronas environmental transport concept have been longstanding factors in this success: the pre-financed and subsidised public transport season ticket for the surrounding region, "RegioCard", and the company's so-called integrated timetables. Employees are able to pay for their annual season tickets on a monthly basis, without having to find the EUR 395 for the annual ticket all at once. Despite this, they still benefit from having twelve monthly tickets for the price of ten. In addition, the company pays a subsidy of EUR 55 for each annual season ticket bought.
Micronas draws up integrated public transport timetables for its employees, thus relieving them of the frequently troublesome task of planning their journey to work by train, tram or bus. The Micronas Works Council compiles the fastest connections for 33 different routes to and from work, scheduled to match the company's shifts, and makes these available in leaflets and in the Internet. And these leaflets are in their 37th edition already. All the available public transport services are taken into account - local trams and buses, German Railways and private transport companies. Additional services round off the concept; these include organising car-sharing, providing covered cycle parking areas and running a subsidised special bus to bring employees from the rural areas of Alsace, in France, to Micronas.
"The constantly growing number of employees who leave their car at home makes us all the more determined to forge ahead with our campaign", says Walter Baireuther. "Of the 1,800 or so people who work at Micronas, some 300 take up the company's season ticket offer for public transport and, in summer, more than 200 come by bike. And there are more than 100 colleagues engaged in car sharing. This is why the Ecological Transport Seal is not just an award for Micronas as a company but, above all, for its employees, who have opted for environmentally-compatible transport for their journey to work."