One significant result of the trend towards an all-embracing environmental protection policy in past years has been the inclusion of the supplier chain. As a Company with global operations, Continental AG, which purchases its raw materials on international markets, regards environmental protection as an integral part of optimizing its suppliers.

For this reason, a supplier assessment is conducted using a questionnaire before placing an order with a new supplier. Among the environmental standards are energy consumption, product packaging, plant tidiness and cleanliness, safety data sheets for the product, environmental certification and contingency management in the plant. We also continuously encourage our suppliers to obtain comparable environmental data from their suppliers, our pre-suppliers. Continental regularly requests valid environment certificates from the large majority of suppliers with which it already has contracts. At the end of 2008, we had approximately 2,800 suppliers on our records, about 35% of whom had installed an environmental management system certified to ISO 14001 standards. The Corporation regards the integration of supplier information on environmental protection into a practical, comprehensible evaluation system as a perspective challenge that involves the close collaboration of the relevant divisions at Continental.