Obermurtaler Brauerei GmbH - Austria
EMAS as an instrument to “improve every day in every
way”
As of its creation in 1990, the brewery has been very successful.
Today it is an institution in Murau renowned for its
commitment towards future generations and neighbours
and customers ensuring that the co-operative pays special
attention to the preservation of the environment. It is for this reason that the enterprise holds with pride the
EMAS registration No. A-000001 at the Federal Environment
Agenc
Why EMAS?
The decision by Obermurtaler Brauerei GmbH to obtain
EMAS registration was guided by the desire to constantly
satisfy the customers’ high quality requirements and environmental
awareness in a still intact area, where the
economy is mainly based on agriculture, tourism and numerous
small businesses. For the company itself, actively
dealing with environmental matters is crucial to making
long-term provisions for the future. This is also underlined
by the fact that the brewery wants to become one of Austria’s
trendsetters in operational environmental protection
(a central principle of environmental policy according to
which potential environmental impacts shall be prevented
in advance or rectified at the source).
An overall appraisal
Benefits of the implementation of EMAS
In over 10 years since the introduction of EMAS, the enterprise
has managed to implement a large number of plans:
• Obermurtaler Brauerei GmbH is the first company in
Styria to achieve the consolidation of its licence notification
(an incentive for EMAS organisations through
which they can ask public authorities to consolidate
their permits) formulated in the Austrian Environment
Management Act.
• The enterprise started a virtuous cycle with its suppliers
and partners, engaging farmers of the northern
wine quarters of Zistersdorf who fulfil the company’s
guidelines and have committed themselves to apply the strict basic rules of natural,
environmentally friendly and sustainable management of their fields.
• The company’s environmental interests are supported by a multi-functional environment
team consisting of 12 people from all operational areas who once a month look
into all the environmental problems in the brewery. Results are reported to the cooperative’s
Board of Directors and Supervisory Board, to workers’ representatives and
safety experts in order to raise a sense of responsibility among all the employees,
encouraging them to act in an environmentally conscious way.
• Murau Brewery has Eco-label 542: “returnable drink packaging” since 1998.
Challenges encountered in applying EMAS
The main difficulty with applying the eco-audit scheme was encountered by Obermurtaler
Brauerei GmbH when first introducing EMAS in 1995. The environmental managers of the
company had to start learning the requirements of the EMAS regulation to understand at
first hand the meaning of the system in order to be able to communicate it also to the other
workers. Moreover, besides the ecological improvements, it was also necessary to recognise
in them an economic advantage. After 12 years of EMAS it can be stated that this has been
achieved: the company has been able to combine profits and sustainable development.