Who will be the winner of the Blue Angel Prize 2014?

Nominations go to three companies

award ceremony Blue Angel Award — **The award ceremony for the Blue Angel Prize will take place again on German Sustainability Day.**
Source: Christian Lietzmann

The "Blue Angel Prize" is being awarded this year for extraordinary corporate commitment to protection of the environment and health. The jury in charge has nominated three companies for this prize from Germany's most prominent ecolabel: the furniture manufacturer hülsta, the producers of pellet boilers KWB, and printer maker KYOCERA. Federal Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks said: "The three nominees have demonstrated quite impressively that environmental and health protection can go hand in hand with profitableness. The Blue Angel is a means for companies to provide consumers a credible and reliable tool for guidance when purchasing products." The prize will be awarded by Maria Krautzberger, President of the Federal Environment Agency, at the gala event of the German Sustainability Award on 28 November. "I hope that even more companies will work to constantly improve their products and believe in the Blue Angel", said Maria Krautzberger. "It is precisely the everyday products which surround us that demand innovation and must put less of a strain on the environment while protecting health. The Blue Angel is a way for companies to show they are taking responsibility for the environment and health."

This year is the second time the furniture manufacturer hülsta-werke Hüls GmbH has been nominated for the Blue Angel Prize. The family-run business from the region of Münster has already placed the Blue Angel on 1,993 of its products, making it one of the forerunners in the furniture industry. Since 1996 its entire range of modular furniture bears the ecolabel for low-emission wood products and wood-base products (RAL-UZ 38).

Because of its large surface area furniture can be a significant source of pollution in indoor spaces. The pollutants are often found in coatings, paints, varnishes, and adhesives. The environmentally friendly production techniques of the Hülsta company address these issues. The firm is driving the development of environmentally friendly paints and coating systems and thereby helping to make products in the sector more compatible with the environment and healthier for consumers.

KWB - Kraft und Wärme aus Biomasse GmbH, a biomass heating systems company from Austria, develops innovative solutions in biomass heating and has certified its boilers since 2003 with the ecolabel for low-emission and energy efficient wood pellet boilers (RAL-UZ 112). Wood pellet heating systems with the Blue Angel use renewable sources of energy and are efficient and low-emissions. They meet strict requirements for efficient energy use, auxiliary power demand, and emissions of carbon monoxide, dust, carbon and nitrogen oxides.
The company's own research and development centre plays a key role in the continuous reduction of emissions from wood pellet heating systems and thereby in improving air quality.

KYOCERA Document Solutions Deutschland GmbH is a global market leader in printer manufacturing. Some 50 of its systems currently carry the ecolabel for energy-efficient and low-emissions printers and copiers (RAL-UZ 171). KYOCERA produced the world's first printer to be certified with the Blue Angel back in 1997. Printers and multifunction devices must comply with more than 100 environmental and safety criteria before they are awarded the Blue Angel. These criteria include the use of environmentally friendly materials, low energy consumption and recyclability. For better indoor air the Blue Angel has strict requirements for fine and ultrafine particle release during laser printer operation.

The jury for the German Sustainability Award makes the nominations for the Blue Angel Prize. "The Blue Angel stands tall and strong in the ocean of labels out there", says Stefan Schulze-Hausmann, the initiator of the German Sustainability Award. "We are glad to be able to ensure that it will continue to be valued by consumers and sought-after by producers."

The Blue Angel Prize is being awarded for the third consecutive year.

Further information:

Currently the Blue Angel is on about 12,000 products from 1,500 companies in 120 different product groups. Go to www.blauer-engel.de to view all products and the criteria for award. Independence and credibility are guaranteed by the Environmental Label Jury, the Federal Ministry for the Environment, the Federal Environment Agency, and the RAL gGmbH. The members of the Environmental Label Jury are representatives of the Federation of German Industries (BDI), BUND/Friends of the Earth Germany, the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB), the Main Association of German Retail Trade (HDE), the Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU), the Federation of German Consumer Organisations (vzbv), the German Confederation of Skilled Crafts (ZDH), the German Consumer Foundation "Stiftung Warentest", the media, churches, science, the German Association of Cities, and the federal states.

Who will be the winner of the Blue Angel Prize 2014? | Umweltbundesamt

Joint press release of the Federal Environment Agency and the Federal Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety and the Blue Angel