"Bold decisions today will trigger positive interactions for tomorrow"

Mannheim. Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has called on the citizens to "make bold decisions today" in environmental and climate protection to trigger "positive interactions for tomorrow". "The future is not simply predestined. It's up to us what we make of it," he said today at the presentation of the German Environmental Award of the Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt (DBU) in Mannheim: "The plastic bottle that is recycled today or not even produced will not end up in the oceans tomorrow. It will be back in the raw material cycle the day after tomorrow. The soil, which is protected from erosion today, binds carbon. And it can still be used tomorrow as farmland to feed people." Steinmeier presented the soil scientist Prof. Dr. Ingrid Kögel-Knabner from the Technical University of Munich and entrepreneur Reinhard Schneider (Werner & Mertz, Mainz) the highest endowed independent environmental award in Europe with a total of Euro 500,000.

Further information on the presentation of the German Environmental Award 2019 can be found at www.dbu.de.