Green Marine welcomes Canadian shipowner NEAS

Canadian NEAS Group has become the latest shipowner to join Green Marine, a voluntary environmental program for North America’s maritime industry.

NEAS operates principally in the Canadian Arctic’s eastern and western regions, as well as polar and remote High North regions, primarily to provide essential resupply services to northern communities.

The group is committed to conducting its operations in a sustainable manner and adopted an internal health, safety and environmental policy in 2017.

“At NEAS, we are driven by our values of social responsibility, focused on people, communities and service,” Suzanne Paquin, the NEAS Group’s president and chief executive officer, said.

“The detailed Green Marine framework will support us in our approach to reducing our environmental footprint in the Great North.”

Based in Valleyfield, near Montreal, NEAS has as its mission to provide maritime container and packaged resupply services in remote eastern and western Arctic regions.

“The NEAS Group’s structure and mission, which promote sustainable economic and social development in Northern communities, corresponds with our primary objective to continually improve maritime transport’s environmental performance,” David Bolduc, Green Marine’s executive director, commented.

Founded in 2007, the Green Marine environmental program addresses a number of environmental priority issues through its thirteen performance indicators, such as greenhouse gases, air emissions, leak and spill prevention, waste management, environmental leadership and community impacts. Some indicators apply to landside operations and other to shipping activities.

The certification process is “rigorous and transparent”, with the results independently verified every two years and the individual performance of each enterprise published annually.

To date, more than 145 ship owners, port authorities, terminal operators, and shipyard managers throughout Canada and the United States are participants in the program.