ESPO congratulates Port of Rotterdam (Netherlands), Port of Le Havre (France) and Port of Piraeus (Greece) for renewing EcoPorts’ environmental management standard (PERS). Isabelle Ryckbost, ESPO’s Secretary General, Eamonn O’Reilly, ESPO’s Chairman, and Sotiris Raptis, EcoPorts coordinator, handed over the PERS certificates to the ports’ representatives during the annual ESPO Conference in Rotterdam.
Being PERS certified requires amongst others that the port increases transparency by making its environmental report publicly available. It also implies that the port is effectively monitoring the environmental challenges and is implementing an improved environmental management. PERS helps ports to comply with legislation and meet customer expectations. Additionally, ports’ environmental performance is increasingly taken into account ("factored-in") in calculations of the premium by major insurance companies; standards such as PERS are recognized as components of a sustainable approach.
One third of the 94 EcoPorts members have now acquired PERS, which is the only port specific environmental management standard.
Compliance with the PERS standard is independently assessed by Lloyd’s Register and the certificate has a validity of two years. PERS is revised after the 2-year period to make sure that the port continues to meet the requirements.
The EcoPorts tools are available to ports and terminals outside Europe through the ECO Sustainable Logistic Chain Foundation (ECOSLC).