The green sustainable performance comparison of the three biggest container terminals in Turkey

The business processes run by companies or organisations may have a negative effect on environment. The green sustainable situation gets affected negatively by the global trade system which increasingly demands more natural sources. This trend in terminal ports is as much visible as any other business environment. Although the literature has mentioned about sustainable and green port criteria, there is a gap about the green container port terminal criteria. Furthermore, the concept of green container port terminal is a very new application in Turkey. This research work explores this new concept and chooses the three biggest container terminals of Turkey handling over a million TEU as case for data collection. This developing country is also an interesting case because new government legislation gives incentives to container ports for signing up to the green initiative. The purpose of this research is to enhance our understanding on environmental approach in green container terminal operations. As critical realists would argue, new interpretations might set the wheels in motion for change and improvement. This study makes contributions to our knowledge on green sustainable container terminal management. The issue of this research is potentially significant for practitioners as well as academics. In terms of academic perspective, this study is likely to demonstrate an understanding of environmental container terminal management. Due to this reason many researches had explained the sustainability issues on ports. However, there is no specific focus on green container terminal management in the literature in details. In this research a framework is developed to analyse green sustainable performance of the three biggest container terminals, namely Marport, Mersin International Port and Kumport, in Turkey. Regarding to make a green sustainable port performance comparison of container terminal alternatives (three aforementioned terminals), A Multi Attribute Value Analysis (MAVA) methodology of Multi Criteria Decision Making field is developed. According to value three of green sustainable terminal comparison model, three main criteria are determined as pollution, energy and habitat deformation. These each main criteria contains various sub-criteria which has huge influence in decision making process. In consideration of green container terminal performances, each alternative is scaled for each sub-criteria/criteria based on unit handling such as for air pollution sub-criteria tonnes /TEU handling and for noise pollution sub-criteria decibel/TEU handling. In addition to performance scaling, a green logistics expert survey is designed to determine decision weigh of each criteria/sub-criteria. According to obtained performance scale and decision weigh data it would be possible to get results of best container terminal alternative in terms of green sustainable terminal performance. The sensitivity analysis of each criterion is indicated and robustness of the decision making results are analysed. The results of this analysis are expected to determine significance of each green sustainable criteria/sub-criteria for container terminals and to make a comparative assessment of the biggest three container terminals in Turkey. Outcomes of this research are a guide to future green terminal policy making strategies of port authorities and governments to reach in a better state in terms of green sustainable container terminal operations