Helping the Environment While Saving Money The management of Neckermann, a $ 2.4 billion German mail-order firm, wanted to help protect the environment, (31) ... it formulated a policy directing its employees to work to this end. The (32) ... department, responsible for handling imports from European countries and Asia, proposed sending more imports to Rotterdam, (33) ... where they would be forwarded in barges via the Rhine waterway to the firm’s three warehouses in Frankfurt. Under the old arrangement, imports arriving in Hamburg were sent by rail or road to Frankfurt. The 120,000 tons of merchandise from European suppliers now comes by rail (34) ... of truck as it formerly did. These changes have provided two (35) ... :less environmental damage and (36) ... costs. ’ Based on estimates by the prestigious Planco Institute, the company calculates that the new environmentally friendly system of waterways and rail has (37) ... total costs to the environment (air, ground, water, and noise pollution) from $1.6 million under the old road-intensive arrangement to $ 722,000. In addition, the firm is saving $ 241,000 annually by shipping containers over Rhine waterway from Rotterdam to Frankfurt instead of using (38) ... from Ham burg to Frankfrut. It is now considering supplying its Manngeim warehouse by barge, and it may also use barges on the Rhine (39) ... to handle the 500 containers that come each year from Eastem Europe. This has been made (40) ... by the new Main-Danube canal that extends the Rhine waterway all the way to the Black Sea. Other firms, among them Ford and Unilever, had already changed to the more environmentally friendly fiver system. These companies predict that others will increase their use of water ways when, as expected, the European Union deregulates waterway rates.