This year's DBU German Environmental Award “Deutscher Umweltpreis” goes to three winners – to Dr. Rainer Grießhammer, Member of the Executive Board of the Öko-Institut in Freiburg and the founders of the company Clean Lasersysteme (Herzogenrath), Dr. Winfried Barkhausen and Edwin Büchter. The honorary award, worth € 10,000, goes to the former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
Dr. Rainer Grießhammer receives the prestigious award because he advanced environmental solutions and anchored the issue of sustainability in the everyday life. DBU Secretary General Dr.-Ing. E. h. Fritz Brickwedde honored him as an eclectic thinker, researcher and facilitator of environmental protection. Grießhammer personified the successful work of the Öko-Institut, which he had developed to one of the leading environmental research and consulting institutions in Germany. As a chemist he focused early on new chemicals policy, another concern for him was the product-related environmental and climate protection and the introduction of eco-balances. Beyond his work for the Öko-Institut, Grießhammer was involved in many other panels - such as the Scientific Advisory Council on Global Change of the German government, the Stiftung Warentest and the Board of Trustees of Utopia, the Internet portal for strategic consumption.
The company founders Dr. Winfried Barkhausen and Edwin Büchter are honored for their mobile use laser technology. It purifies environmentally friendly technical surfaces with light, but also offers economic benefits and optimizes health and safety. The Clean Laser-technology provides applications for which there previously was no satisfactory technical solution: no waste from detergents as in conventional processes, blasted parts of old coatings can be sorted by material for recycling, power consumption drops by up to 87 percent. Economically the technology is very advantageous with a cost savings of up to 70 percent. Environmentally-harmful solvents could be dispensed with is of particular benefit to the workers in the factories, Brickwedde added: "A prime example of innovative environmental technology that reduces pollution and creates jobs."
With the winner of the honorary award Mikhail Gorbachev in mind, stated Brickwedde, that his services to the German reunification and the end of the Cold War were "legendary": He was the pioneer for a more peaceful world. But Gorbachev had also always been committed to environmental protection. Had it not been Gorbachev, the Soviet troops were not withdrawn from Germany and huge natural areas, formerly used as military sites, could not serve as large protected areas or national parks today. After his retirement from politics he has always been committed to a global ethic of responsibility, and for a unity of nature and man.
Federal President Christian Wulff presents the awards on 31 October in Bremen.
