The Renfe Environment Management is working for the obtaining of environment accreditations for the combustible, containers and AVE stations transport. The railway company pursues the acquisition of these three certifications, that have influence on Andalucia.
The tank waggons for liquid combustible transported 286.000 tons from Huelva to Madrid.
Renfe -pionner in the obtaining of environment accreditations in Europe, after the obtaining of the firs one in 1997, is working in the acquisition of three accreditings that have a direct influence in Andalucía as in the commodities transport as in the stations management.
Concretly, the Environment Management is looking for the acquisition of three accreditings ISO 14001 for: the liquid combustibles transport that is made by the Commodities Bussiness Unit between Huelva and Madrid, the container transport between La Negrilla (Sevilla) and Abroñigal (Madrid) made by the UN of Combinated Transport and the management of the high velocity stations between Sevilla-Santa Justa and Córdoba.
To obtain yhe accreditations of environment certification means that Renfe, in a voluntary way, develops some action procedures that guarantee that fulfilment of all the encironment and application security legislation, the program of some goals and objectives that will permit a continual improvement of the security and environment protections levels, and the public knowledge of all the actions.
All this process will be audited and verified by independent institutions that had guaranteed yet the existence of a guarantee voluntary system of the service quality for the client and environment obligation for all the society are the main points of the strategic improvement that Renfe wants to do.
The dangerous commodities transport is an important quota of participation for the railway.
MAIN ACTIVITIES
The commodities transport and the stations management activities are the Renfe main services for the introduction of encironment management systems because are more susceptible of generate environment impacts.
The first of the works is centered in the certification of an important dangerous commodities transport like the liquid combustible one made by the UN of commodities in tank waggons from Huelva to Madrid. This transport was the 46% of the total railway traffic of the diesel oil in 1997 in Spain, with more than 286.000 transported tons.
The dangerous commodities transport is an important participation quota for the railway. Renfe transports approximately the 23% of the total volume of this kind of commodities that are transported each year in Spain. Andalucía, Catalonia, Basque Country and Madrid are the main sources and destinations of this kind of traffics.
The environment certification of this commodities traffic will impose bigger security steps and energetic consumption saving.
The second of the certifications pays attention to the container transport between the Sevilla-La Negrilla and Madrid-Abroñigal stations that is the biggest part of the traffic that enters and exist from the Sevilla station. La Negrilla registered a movement of 29.000 TEUS (20 feet containers unit) in 1997, with a volume of 196.000 tons, 21.000 TEUS of these, correspond to the traffic to Madrid-Abroñigal with a number of 192.000 tons.
With the basic objectives that the environment certification of the liquid combustibles transport chases, the goal is an elimination of the leftovers thatrt can produce. The third of the works for the acquisition of the certification is centered in the clasification and differentiated management of the urban solid leftovers ganerated by the use of the AVE stations of Sevilla-Santa Justa and Córdoba, with a movement of aproximately 5,5 and 1,9 millions of pasengers, respectively, according with the last year facts, without counting other people who enter and exit from the station without travel. With this accreditation, Renfe wants a rubbish management generated by both stations differentiated, bigger than the actual rule requirements.
The containers transport between Sevilla-La Negrilla and Madrid-Abroñigal hopes to obtain the same environment certification that this kind of railway transport between Madrid-Abroñigal and Barcelona-Morrot obtained last year.
RENFE, A PIONEER COMPANY
In October, 1997, Renfe was the first european railway company that obtains the certification of one environment management system (Sygma) for one of these services. This certification was the first in a service sector company in Spain.
The acreditation was obtained for the containers traffic of the UN of Combinated Transport between Madrid-Abroñigal and Barcelona-Morrot. The reference rule is the UNE-EN-ISO 14001/1996 and Aenor is the organism wich certificated the completion, wich is the authorizatedty by the National Acreditation Entity (ENAC).
The importance and the challenge of the acquisition of an environment certification is to be able to obtain some quality levels bigger than the required by the actual environment legislation, differents than the ISO 9000 quality certifications, because there aren't a lesgislation about quality. The environment certifications have the objective of the operation costs saving wich influence in a reduction of the tariff payed by the customer as direct lines of the nowadays known as "Green Marketing".
