28 June 2013
On the 13th June the European Sea Ports Organisation (ESPO) awarded Shoreham Port with its Ports Environmental Review System (PERS) certificate during a British Ports Association (BPA) environmental meeting, held at the Port of Tyne. ESPO congratulated Peter Davies, Development Director at Shoreham Port, for this significant achievement.
The PERS certificate is the only port sector specific environmental management standard. PERS is the flagship product of the EcoPorts network and is offered as part of the ESPO services to its members. PERS is independently audited and certified by Lloyd’s Register.
Antonis Michail, ESPO Policy Advisor and David Whitehead, BPA Director, handed out the certificates to Peter Davies, highlighting that it is the first time ESPO has handed this certificate out to an English port.
The "EcoPort" status is obtained by any port within the broad ESPO membership upon completion of a Self Diagnosis Method (SDM) checklist. The Port is awarded for providing data on the performance of its environmental management programme and for contributing in such way to the up-to-date maintenance of the ESPO European Benchmark of performance. Additional credit is provided to ports that are certified with PERS.
Paul Johnson, Safety and HR Director at Shoreham Port added “Receiving the PERS certificate means a great deal to the Port. We focus a lot of our efforts on improving our green credentials and it is extremely encouraging to have our work acknowledged in this way”.
Antonis Michail, ESPO Policy Advisor presented the overall approach of ESPO on port environmental management, focusing on the positive contribution of EcoPorts and the recently published ESPO Green Guide and commented “The positive trends that European ports demonstrate in terms of environmental performance are seen as triggering factors that inspire the ports to continuously work towards achieving further improvement”.
