ESPO congratulates Port of Dunkerque (France) for obtaining for the first time EcoPorts’ environmental management standard (PERS). Isabelle Ryckbost, ESPO’s Secretary General, handed over the PERS certificate to Stéphane Raison, CEO of Port Dunkerque, during a special ceremony which took place at the port.

“I welcome the PERS certification of Port of Dunkerque which has become the fifth port certified with PERS from France. The Port of Dunkerque is clearly a port that puts environmental sustainability on the forefront. We hope that the PERS certification gives the people in the port working on a daily basis on environmental performance the well-deserved   pat on the back. The PERS certification process allows us to know more about and share the good practices of the Port of Dunkerque in terms of dredging and recycling of sediments, the the biodiversity conservation in the port’s green and blue infrastructure, circular economy, adapting to climate change and improving the quality of the air. This in itself brings a lot of added value to the Ecoports network.” says ESPO’s Secretary General, Isabelle Ryckbost.

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.

“EcoPorts has become the main platform where European ports of different size, governance and business models are able to exchange good practices and effectively encourage each other to improve their environmental performance. It is equally essential that EcoPorts’ environmental standard (PERS) is being increasingly recognised as one of the main quality standards of the port sector” says the EcoPorts coordinator, Sotiris Raptis.

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 2 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).

You can find more information on EcoPorts and PERS here: https://www.ecoports.com/pers