Euskotren has an environmental policy in place that establishes the reference framework to roll out the environmental strategic vision; the goal is to preserve citizens’ present and future quality of life by guaranteeing clean and healthy air, water and soil — by means of responsible management of natural resources and appropriately managing the waste generated. The goal is thus to limit the impact of climate change and to protect biodiversity and the functionality of ecological systems.
Thus, the Euskotren Environmental Management Plan 2021-2024 — which deploys the energy and environmental activity planned for that period — continued to be developed in 2023.
The plan focuses on the energy management, circular economy and environmental management challenges to achieve a sole objective of "progressing towards low-carbon and resource-efficient activity".
In 2023, the Environmental Activity Planning 2021-2024 was embodied in the Annual Activities Programme; 43 quantitative indicators were used to measure those actions and showed the real monitoring of the effectiveness of the measures implemented and the evolution of the Plan itself.
Euskotren — both by means of a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis, and of the risk matrix — has its environmental assessment, which has included the actions to be implemented and the opportunities detected in the 2023 Environmental Activities Programme; it also allows the company to be ready to face the threats while addressing both the weaknesses and strengths.
The environmental management is deployed from a continuous improvement approach (plan-do-check-act) as per the criteria established in the UNE-EN-ISO 14001:2015 Environmental Management Systems standard, implemented in the organisation and certified for the transport of passengers by rail, tramway and bus at the Lutxana, Leioa and Zumaia facilities and the Elgoibar, Atxuri and Vitoria-Gasteiz depots.