Targeting Inland Port Sustainability

This paper serves as a literature review and assessment of port sustainability and its potential applications for the inland river ports of Kentucky and the surrounding region. The paper discusses and defines sustainability, both generally as it relates to business and industry and specifically as it relates to the port industry and the inland port industry. Given the unique nature of the inland port industry, this review finds that the most effective methods of pursuing port sustainability have been those that employ strategies of sustainable supply chain management. To help illustrate this conclusion, the paper reviews the sustainability challenges facing various domestic and international ports, as well as some of the policy initiatives undertaken to meet these challenges. Finally, it proposes a research model for examining Kentucky port sustainability that centers on taking the lessons learned from major coastal ports and applying them to the inland port industry. The preliminary results indicate that ports along the region’s inland waterways would have little difficulty adopting the sustainability practices of coastal ports so long as they focus on two types of initiatives. The first being the adoption of simple business general sustainability practices and the second being the enticing of port tenants, operators, and customers to become more sustainable. Alternatively, the more large scale “in house” sustainability initiatives undertaken at coastal ports are likely an over reaching for inland ports at this time.