At Consorcio de Gestión del Puerto de Dock Sud (CGPDS), in our capacity as Port Authority, we consider that the adoption of measures towards the responsible management of resources is an essential aspect of our business. To that end we obtained SDG certification for the following goals; SDG 7 “Affordable and Clean Energy” and SDG 12 “Responsible Consumption and Production”.
The projects CGPDS is working on SDG 7 and 12, and under the Climate and Energy area of interest of the World Port Sustainability Program (WPSP), include: a) substituting fossil fuels using LNG in a first stage; b) using hydrogen energy in port operations; c) installing solar panels in administration buildings and d) installing solar water heaters made from recycled materials in the vulnerable communities surrounding the port. The latter is the one with the highest degree of maturity to date.
The construction and installation of these water heaters, with a life of up to 15 years, provides a solution to the lack of hot water access in the surrounding vulnerable communities, which suffer from major infrastructure deficits. In this way, CGPDS contributes towards improving the quality of life of the neighbors in the community, through this project and in the framework of one of its management pillars “Community – Port”.
In turn, this Project has an extra added value; we foster the reutilization of recyclable waste, such as cans, bottles and other plastic products, which, in many occasions and due to the mismanagement end up polluting coastal and maritime environments. In this way, we start to incentivize an action plan involving SDG 14 – Life below water.
To materialize this Project, our staff collaborated and got trained by an Argentine NGO on the construction of these sustainable water heaters using recyclable waste. This knowledge was then transferred to the local vulnerable communities. With the support of CGTPDS (raw materials, technical assistance, workforce, etc.) each neighbor can nowadays install such water heaters in their homes and enjoy for the first time hot water with their families.