Sustainability of port operations: The European ports’ attempts to reduce negative environmental impacts

The main objectives of the EU transport policy belongs the limitation of the negative environmental impact from ports. Similarly, companies are adopting sustainable supply chain management practices to response the policy makers’ and consumers’ demands for sustainable operations. This paper aims to discover how the largest European container ports communicate about their efforts to improve the sustainability of their operations to find out how the ports themselves see their position as a part of transition towards more sustainable supply chain operations. Based on the study, different large European container ports consider environmental issues variously. The risk is that some ports may get competitive advantages by slipping in the environmental questions. Alternatively, if the port does not take sustainability questions seriously and it gets a bad reputation, the risk is that the customers and consumers do not accept the behavior of the port and shipping companies start to avoid that port.