The Green Award Foundation is an independent organization, founded in 1994 through a joint effort of the Rotterdam Municipal Port Management and the Dutch Ministry of Transport. Green Award was created with the idea that reducing the environmental effects of shipping benefits everyone, including the shipping companies. Their organization’s core mission is “to promote the safe and environmentally friendly behavior of ship and crew/management, mainly by achieving international acceptance, recognition, regulation and coordination of the Green Award Certification, all in observance of (inter)national conventions, legislation and developments in the area of ship lay-out, equipment, crew, operations and management.”

The creation of the Green Award Certification program serves this mission, by providing incentives and market preference for quality tonnage resulting in less incidents and accidents that can jeopardize the marine environment.

The certification process requires a ship owner or manager to submit an application package to identify how the ship meets the Green Award standards for navigation, cargo operations, bunkering, maintenance, appropriate condition assessment programs, crew training, double hull gas monitoring, quality management, and best practices for incident reporting and general safety. The certification requirement standards vary depending on the type of ship and cargo (oil tanker, chemical tanker, liquefied natural gas carrier, bulk cargo, container cargo).

After the application has been submitted, a full survey and audit of the vessel must be completed to determine if the procedures are well implemented. If the Green Award requirements are and sufficient score is reached, and the verification is successful, the ship will be certified. In order to maintain certification, these audits are repeated every three years. After certification of a ship, Green Award publishes the vessel on their website list and informs the incentive providing ports on a monthly basis.

Thus far, there are certificate holders from:
Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, Greece, Hong Kong, Japan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Russia, U.A.E., and the U.K.

The Green Award ports currently offering incentives are located in:
Belgium, Canada, Germany, Gibraltar, Latvia, Lithuania, New Zealand, Oman, Portugal, South Africa, and the Netherlands