Werner & Mertz receives Environmental Management Award!

Recyclate Initiative as example of a functional circular economy impressed the jury

Renowned award for the EMAS pioneer: Werner & Mertz receives the Environmental Management Award 2025 in the category “Best Measures for Improving Environmental Performance” for its Recyclate Initiative. The honor is conferred by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMUKN) and the Austrian Federal Ministry for Climate Protection (BMLUK). Only EMAS-validated companies in the DACH region can apply for the award.

“EMAS is a diamond of resource conservation that gets an enhancing cut every year. The Environmental Management Award is not the award of yesterday—with EMAS, it’s the award of tomorrow!” says Werner & Mertz owner Reinhard Schneider.

With the award, the German-Austrian jury commended the Recyclate Initiative founded in 2012 by Werner & Mertz and its cooperation partners along the supply chain, who worked together to develop and implement high-quality mechanical recycling of used plastic from post-consumer waste collection systems like the Yellow Bag.

Plastic recycling prevents the trashing of land and sea, conserves resources and stops the incineration of valuable plastic. By reducing the CO2 emissions of every product packaging, the Initiative actively contributes to climate protection. It also makes environmental protection of integral components in product design, production, usage and disposal ecologically and economically effective. Over the years Werner & Mertz has been recognized as a cross-industry pioneer and a best practice example for high-quality recycling of plastic. In June 2025 the Recyclated Initiative announced a world record: one billion PET bottles produced from 100 percent recycled plastic had been made available for further recycling!

The jury based its assessment on several criteria, including effectiveness, iInnovative content, integration in corporate communications and corporate strategy, and transparency and comprehensibility of the presentation.

“Winning the German-Austrian Environmental Management Award confirms again how consistently, soundly and integrally we improve our environmental performance through targeted and longstanding measures at our EMAS-validated sites in Mainz and Hallein. We are proud of this award and, as a pioneer, can expressly encourage other companies to get involved in EMAS, the most substantiated standard for sustainable environmental management,” says Yannic von Raesfeld, Head of Sustainability Management at Werner & Mertz.

The award ceremony took place during the conference “30 Years of EMAS—a sustainable success” in the Haus der Deutschen Wirtschaft in Berlin. For the Mainz manufacturer of cleaning products, EMAS, the world’s most extensive, highest quality system for sustainable management, is of special significance. For more than 20 years, the production site in Mainz has been validated by EMAS.

The family-owned business is the first industrial company ever to undergo an additional audit based on the We Impact standard, which puts the focus on social and governance aspects in operational processes. Werner & Mertz thus voluntarily and simultaneously fulfills many requirements of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the Supply Chain Due Diligence Act (LkSG).