When shipping is used more widely, the noise, over-crowding and accident risks on our roads are reduced.
This does not mean, of course, that shipping has no environmental problems of its own. A major problem comes from the various types of airborne emissions produced by the use of fossil fuels. These are generally higher at sea than on land, where legislative measures have successfully led to reductions of airborne emissions. Wallenius’ ambition is to maintain a car and truck-carrier fleet with the lowest environmental impact possible for all our sakes.
Wallenius has identified five areas of environmental impact from shipping - carbon dioxide, sulphur content in fuels, nitrogen oxides, toxic anti-fouling and ballast water.
Carbon dioxide contributes to climate change, high levels of sulphur in marine fuels contribute to acidification, and nitrogen oxides in exhaust gases contribute to acidification as well as eutrophication. Toxic substances in antifouling coatings affect the marine species and the use of ballast water transfers organisms between the world's oceans which may disturb the biodiversity.
These five areas are Wallenius’ highest priority and we constantly undertake projects, and have done so for years, in order to reduce the environmental impact of our activities.
Care for the environment has always been very important to Wallenius. But the formalisation and structure of the environmental work started back in 1996 when questions about how our environmental impact was being taken care of started to be asked. An environmental management system (EMS) was designed and the implementation process started. Two years later, Wallenius became the first shipping company in Sweden, and one of the first in the world to certify the EMS according to ISO 14001.
Our philosophy is to work with upstream solutions, which mean that we try to find the source of the problem and create a solution before it becomes an issue. For example, we look to reduce the creation of emissions, rather than treating them afterwards. We are determined to be in the forefront of environmental efforts and our ambition is to show others what is possible and how we together can reduce the environmental impact of shipping.
We are convinced that maritime emissions can be reduced relatively easily. However, to ensure that shipping can develop into the sustainable means of transport that it has the potential to be, this is naturally dependant on all parties working on these issues.
Read more about our goals
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