Company Environmental Management

 

 

Service quality and innovation were just two of the values our company contributed to the aviation sector in 1994 when we founded Spain’s first regional aviation company.

 

We went one step further in January, 2001 by initiating an environmental management system process designed to assist with the regulation of the environmental impact of our ground and aircraft maintenance activities, a process which required exhaustive planning and an important amount of company resources. The management system, as laid out in the UNE-EN-ISO 14001 standards certificate, was implemented over a two year period from 2001 to 2002.

 

 

Policy declaration following the application of the environmental management system

 

The ISO 14001 standards certificate process took place in accordance with the company’s commitment, as leader of the Spanish regional aviation sector and important reference point within Europe, to minimise the environmental impact of our company business activities. Our company management, having consolidated the development of the environmental management system process with all the necessary resources, announced the company’s commitment to the environment by formally introducing its environmental policy drawn up in accordance with our company’s individual characteristics and those of our business activities.       

In this respect, our company’s main priority was to provide those members of our staff responsible for the project with as many resources as possible followed by the publication of our environmental policy declaration once the system process had been finalised. Our company was, as a result able to achieve high levels of implication from those involved in the project from the start of the process.

 

 

First Spanish commercial passenger airline to obtain the ISO 14001 environmental management certification

 

The system process took into account the overall structure of the organisation, responsibilities, procedures, processes and resources (material and human) available to Air Nostrum in order to enable our company to develop, implant and regularly update its environmental policy in alignment with the commitment previously established by our company management team. It embodies a continuous improvement tool that will allow us to improve the processes and results of our environmental policy in each of the areas it has been set up to manage.

 

During the implantation of the management system, our company put into operation a rigorous system of internal and external audits in order to determine the level of compliance with the previously established plans. The certification process was, following the adjustment of a number of areas that needed improving, approved by the TÜV Rheinland Group, global service provider of independent inspection, testing and certification services, approved by the Spanish accreditation body, the Entidad Nacional de Acreditación (ENAC).

 

Our company was awarded its ISO 14001 environmental management system certificate in January, 2003, turning it into the first Spanish commercial passenger airline to obtain this important certification.

 

Our company revises its environmental management system on a periodic basis as part of the regulatory certificate surveillance audits and renewal process of the previously-mentioned ISO 14001 environmental management system certificate.

 

The most recent surveillance audits and certificate renewal were carried out by BUREAU VERITAS.

 

 

 

Paper Project

 

The Air Nostrum Paper Project was created in 2003 as a tool for improving our company’s paper management. The main objective of this project was to bring into operation the 3R principle (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle) designed, amongst other things, to increase employee environmental awareness.

 

The project was designed to:

 

·       Introduce a paper management tool as part of our environmental management system.

·       Provide an environmental analysis of the paper used in our company’s office areas.

·       Activate the environmental 3R rule mentioned above.

 

We feel this project deserves a special mention for its originality and the weighing scale our company has achieved concerning company paper consumption and tree felling. Having determined the amount of paper consumed and its impact on the environment, we provided a multidisciplinary work team, made up of company department representatives, with a variety of improvement tools. The impact of our paper project is measured annually by calculating the number of trees felled needed to produce the paper consumed by our company.

 

Our aim is to compensate the amount of paper used by planting the same number of trees as those felled. Some fifty employees, including company management, are invited each year to take a day off and plant the trees we have calculated were used to manufacture the paper consumed. This arrangement allows our company to symbolically feel at “peace with nature”.

 

As a result of the actions of the company departments, our company has, since 2003, avoided the felling of approximately 6,000 trees with an average age of 20 years.

 

The monitoring of paper consumption has resulted in an 80% reduction in the number of trees used in the manufacture of DIN-A4 white paper during the period 2003-2020 as can be seen from the following graph:-

 

 

As far as the consumption in kilogrammes of white A4 paper is concerned, a reduction of 75% can be observed over the period 2003-2020 as seen below:-

 

 

 

 

 

In 2004, the Catalonian marketing and tourism school, Escuela de Marketing y Turismo (ESMA), awarded our company second prize for our Paper Project in acknowledgement of our on-going commitment to the environment.

 

 

The trees planted by Air Nostrum staff compensate for 2,344 metric tons of CO2

Taking into account that half (3,255) of the total number of trees (6,510) planted by our company since 2003 survive and that a tree with an average lifespan of 60 years will compensate for 0.72 metric tons of CO2, according to the average set down by the United Nations Environment Programme, we could say that the total number of trees planted by our company from 2003 to 2020 will eventually compensate for a total 2,344 metric tons of CO2 during their life cycle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Participation in the United Nations Environment ‘Billion Tree Campaign’ Programme

 

One of the aims of the 10th Air Nostrum Reforesting Day was to participate in the United Nations environmental programme’s Billion Tree Campaign aimed at individuals, organisations, companies and government agencies who were invited to participate in this campaign by planting, as its name suggests, a billion trees.

 

 

 

 

 

 

AENA Environment Awards

 

 

Quality, innovation and environment have always been an essential part of our company values. It is for this reason our company has, since it began operating, taken its commitment to the environment very seriously. In fact, we are continually developing ways to minimise the impact of our company business operations on the environment in the airports in which we operate.

 

As a result of our on-going efforts in this respect, we have made important advances in flight sustainability for which we were awarded, in December, 2008, the AENA Environment Award for the most environmentally-friendly aviation company operating to and from the Son Sant Joan Airport in Majorca.

 

In 2011, we were further rewarded for our dedication to the environment. On this occasion, we were presented with the I Environment Management Award awarded by the Manises Airport authorities in Valencia.