Green ports – What shade of green are you?

The general consensus was that despite the global recession, ports were moving ahead with their environmental and sustainable development programmes, with a mix of legislation, corporate strategies, including cost saving opportunities, and ‘peer pressure’ spurring them on.

Henrik Kristensen, head of corporate social responsibility at The Hague-based APM Terminals explained: ‘The Walmart’s and IKEA’s of this world are putting incredible pressure on their service providers, including the ocean carriers, to adopt greener practices and this is filtering down the chain to ports and terminals,’ he said. ‘This situation will continue.’

Charles Haine, global environmental manager at DP World, alluded to a similar situation occurring. ‘We were recently approached by several shipping lines about our carbon reporting processes,’ he said. ‘This really does reveal just how important sustainable supply chains are becoming.’

‘At DP World we are working towards a more robust system by breaking down our energy usage and ensuring that individual terminals are more transparent in their reporting.’

Encouragingly, most of the ports and terminals participating at the event claimed that despite the recession significant progress was being made on implementing environmental management systems.

It was a view shared by Sian John, director of environment, UK, at Royal Haskoning. Referring to the results of a recent survey undertaken by ICM Research with 100 of the UK’s decision makers in the ports industry, she said: ‘More than half (57%) feel they must take responsibility for providing resources in order to achieve environmental compliance and have taken steps to improve the environmental sustainability of their ports.’

John added: About 87% claim to have made more efficient use of energy, 42% have installed sustainable drainage systems and over half of respondents said they were using low carbon, renewable materials.’

Yet the executive alluded to almost one in ten ports ‘not planning to do anything in the 12 months or unsure of what they should be doing.’

She concluded: ‘We must encourage and assist UK ports, within the current financial constraints, to introduce and maintain practical measures that will enable them to comply with legislation and achieve the objectives of their environmental policies.’