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News of November 13, 2002

DaimlerChrysler promotes environmental protection innovations

Presentation of DaimlerChrysler Environmental Leadership Award

Stuttgart - DaimlerChrysler presented five staff teams with the Environmental Leadership Award (ELA) in Stuttgart-Möhringen. Among the award winners is a project team from the DaimlerChrysler plant in Sindelfingen, which succeeded in reducing hazardous waste volumes by as much as 99 percent.

The award winners were selected from more than 100 project applications. The award is endowed with up to € 10,000.

Seven board members attended this year's award ceremony, demonstrating how seriously environmental protection is taken at DaimlerChrysler. Jan Hofer, a news anchorman on German television, took the assembly through the program. The latter was preceded by a panel discussion on the subject of "Protection of climate and resources - challenges for the automotive industry" in which high-ranking representatives from industry and environmental protection associations took part.

Winners in the three categories of "production-related environmental protection", "product-related environmental protection" and "outstanding environmental commitment"

Drastic reduction in hazardous waste volumes by 99 percent in the Sindelfingen plant

Since the early nineties, staff at the Sindelfingen plant have developed different processes and technologies which permit the recycling of hazardous materials and drastically reduce waste volumes. Between 1990 and 2001, hazardous waste was reduced from approx. 8,000 to 84 tons per year in Sindelfingen. With these measures, costs are reduced by almost € 35 million - demonstrating the fact that environmental protection can also be profitable in business management terms.

In the Sindelfingen project, the "paint and paint finish" cycle was for the first time considered under environmental protection aspects. Thanks to a new recycling process, it is now possible to reuse paint residues. Among other things, this process generates methanol, which can be reused in the in-house production process - for instance as a solvent for paints and degreasing cleansing agents. Newly developed water-based materials without heavy metals are used increasingly in order to reduce the volumes of conventional paint.

Fuel Cell Sprinter

In close cooperation with Hermes Versand Service, a Hamburg-based delivery service, the Mercedes-Benz Van Unit, the DaimlerChrysler Fuel Cell Project House and Messrs. Ballard Power Systems based in Vancouver, Canada, the world's first vehicle with fuel cell drive was put into operation by a service provider in 2001. The customer was deliberately integrated in the project - regular customer inquiries and presentations of the new propulsion technology in operation generate acceptance and trust on the part of customers at an early stage.

The Fuel Cell Sprinter is powered by electrical energy which is released during the reaction of hydrogen and oxygen. The enormous advantage of this technology lies in the fact that the chemical reaction produces nothing but water vapor. As a result, the zero-emission and low-noise van, running on gaseous hydrogen, is optimally suited to operation in cities and conurbations with high traffic loads.

EEMS internal communication system at the Brampton assembly plant

Active contributions to environmental protection are a matter of course for the staff of the Brampton assembly plant. Since the implementation of an internal communication program, Enhanced Environmental Management System (EEMS), in the spring of 2001, every individual staff member has been able to take the initiative in environmental protection. The new communication system provides information on the environmental situation at the plant and answers staff questions, as well as recording and evaluating improvement proposals and criticism. With its new communication platform, the plant succeeded in reducing waste volumes by 31 percent and costs by $ 350,000.

(Nov 11, 2002)

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