OekoBusiness Wien - Philosophy and objectives

The purpose of OekoBusiness Wien is to help enterprises generate "green and clean" profits through ecological management practices that benefit both the environment and the enterprises, ensuring high quality and financial benefits in each company.

OekoBusiness Wien aims to:

• Reduce adverse environmental impacts of economic activity through integrated environmental protection strategies
• Improve the competitive position of Viennese businesses through more efficient use of resources (making full use of innovative potentials and cost saving opportunities), sustaining employment over the medium term
• Strengthen the advisory component in the relationship between the city administration and private sector enterprises
• Contribute to the sustainable development of the City of Vienna
• Support the exchange of information, nationally and internationally, with city administrations and enterprises running similar programmes
• Extend and support environmental protection efforts both nationally and internationally
• Contribute to de-coupling economic growth from resource consumption and environmental damage

OekoBusiness Wien goes international

An important advantage of OekoBusiness Wien is its universal applicability allowing for the implementation of the programme in part or as a whole in other regions or countries. In 2004, five federal provinces of Austria (Lower Austria, Salzburg, Styria, Vorarlberg and Upper Austria) started to cooperate with OekoBusiness Wien. The new cooperation partners began using the database and will develop it further together with OekoBusiness Wien. The European Union has supported OekoBusiness Wien with EUR 674,000. These funds were granted within the framework of the INTERREG IIIA project "Wien-Györ", which focuses on energy efficiency and exchange of training between the Hungarian city of Györ and Vienna. Other environmentally conscious cities such as Athens, the capital of Greece, and India's fourth-largest city, Chennai (Madras), are developing programmes of their own modelled on OekoBusiness Wien.

International recognition

UN Habitat has included OekoBusiness Wien in its Best Practices Database which lists the best sustainability projects worldwide.

Likewise EU Commission regards the Environmental Service Package of the City of Vienna as an example of best practice.