Awards Terms & Conditions
1. Preamble
1.1 The following terms and conditions (“Rules”) apply to any party interested to participate in the ESG Shipping Awards (the “Awards”) and are publicly available on our website at esgshippingawards.com (the “Website”).
The Awards have been established to recognize the best performing shipping companies across a range of ESG categories. The Awards will promote best practices, innovation and leadership in the space of ESG within the Maritime industry.
1.2 By entering the Awards’ competition, you agree to be bound by the present Rules. More precisely, any interested person (including -inter alia- the candidates, the sponsors, and the members of the judging committee) by the submission/the acceptance of his participation accepts fully and unconditionally the Rules of the Awards.
1.3 The Awards are organized by “MARITIME IMPACT G.P.” – distinctive title “ESG SHIPPING AWARDS”– (“the Organizer”) under the auspices of the Hellenic Chamber of Shipping and the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Insular Policy. The Organizer’s vision is to promote and recognize initiatives on ESG and Sustainability within the Maritime industry in Greece and on a global scale.
1.4 The Organizer reserves the right to cancel or amend the Awards or the Rules if an event outside of its reasonable control occurs (e.g., –inter alia– a catastrophe, war, civil or military disturbance, covid-19 measures). Participants in the Awards may not make any claim against the Organizer arising from the above actions, as well as from their participation in the Awards in general. The Organizer will make reasonable efforts to display any changes on the Website..
2. ENTERING THE AWARDS
2.1 The Awards are open to shipping companies which own/operate vessels in Greece or worldwide. The Organizer accepts self-nominations as well nominations for shipping companies from third parties. Each year there will be four (4) main ESG Award Categories, i.e. ESG Leader Award, ESG Environment Leader Award, ESG Social Leader Award and ESG Governance Leader Award and other Award Categories to be decided jointly by the Organizer and the Judging Committee, which for this year are: ESG Climate Change Leader Award, ESG Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Leader Award, ESG People Leader Award, ESG Community Contribution Leader Award, ESG Technology Leader Award, and ESG Industry Partnership Leader Award. Entities can nominate projects, actions or best practices related to each Award category.
2.2 The entities can provide information about their ESG activities, procedures, and policies. The actions must have taken place during 2023 (or until the submission day) and must be impactful, inclusive, and measurable. The interested to participate in the Awards entity should inform the Organizer about the existence of any confidential information included in its nomination description. It is clarified that if there are confidential elements, the Organizer will not make them public, but will disclose them to Judging Committee, which will evaluate but not disclose any confidential elements. The Organizer shall not be liable for any information in the nomination which is made public, and which was not identified as confidential at the time of submission of the nomination by the applicant, which is solely responsible.
2.3 In order to allow more companies to enter the Awards’ competition, each entity can be nominated for up to two (2) categories and can nominate up to three (3) projects, actions or best practices per category. A separate application must be submitted for each category.
2.4 The entries open from 9 January 2024 to 15 March 2024. Once a candidate has started his online entry, he may work on the submission up until 23.59 hrs EET. on the day of the deadline, i.e., 15 March 2024. Upon the lapse of the above date, no amendment to the submitted nominations can be accepted by the Organizer.
2.5 To enter the Awards nomination process, entities must login with an ESGSA account, or they can register for a new account. All candidates will have to fill in a form by answering a questionnaire and submitting any supporting documents, including but not limited to, sustainability reports, press coverage, recognitions or any internal material related to the ESG category. For the supporting documents the above under nr. 2.2 of the present Rules apply as regards confidentiality.
2.6 Candidates at their entry agree that: a) all data submitted is represented accurately to the best of their knowledge, b) they have not submitted/used any images or words that are in any way misleading, distasteful, obscene, libelous, defamatory, indecent, harassing or threatening, c) the documents uploaded/sent do not contain any computer virus or other material that may be harmful to the Organizer’s computer systems, d) they have produced the entry their selves without infringing any third party rights, and e) the decisions of the Judging Committee are not contested and no objections will be accepted or considered for the re-evaluation of the nominations (as a result, the candidates waive any and all claims as regards the above without any liability of the Organizer for any damages).
2.7 Candidates are not allowed to sponsor any award. Likewise, sponsors of the Awards cannot be nominated for them – if incidentally that happens their nomination form will be considered for the following year provided, they are not a sponsor again.
2.8 There is no entry fee for the nomination submission.
2.9 The Organizer is not responsible for any error, omission, interruption, deletion, defect, delay in operation or transmission, communications line failure, theft, destruction, alteration of or unauthorized access to entries, or entries lost, damaged or delayed as a result of server functions, technical issues, viruses, bugs or other causes outside our reasonable control. The Organizer may also, in appropriate circumstances, and at its sole discretion, reject, edit, remove or disable access to entries that appear to be legally or otherwise problematic.
2.10 Any personal data relating to candidates will be used in accordance with the Organizer’s Privacy Policy and will not be disclosed to a third party without the candidate’s prior consent.
3. SELECTION PROCESS
3.1 The finalists and the winners of each ESG category will be judged by a Judging Committee. The Judging Committee consists of at least eight (8) members. The Judges are members of non-for-profit organizations involving in Academia, Finance, Diversity, Health & Safety, Maritime, Decarbonization etc., experts in the respective ESG areas and shipping. The Judges must have a real passion about ESG and fulfill at least two of the bellow criteria:
- ESG/sustainability understanding (need for and benefits that derive from ESG),
- Good understanding of the Maritime sector,
- Knowledge of international/EU policies related to ESG or Maritime.
3.2 It is noted that the Judges are invited by the Organizer to undertake their duties on a personal basis to act under their capacity as individuals, irrespective of their current job position in any company/organization. However, each member of the Judging Committee should notify in due course the Organizer in case of a change of his professional status (i.e., change of job).
3.3 The Organizer at any time has the right to add new members to the Judging Committee provided that the new members fulfill the above criteria. However, the new member(s) of the Judging Committee must be accepted by the majority of the other Judges.
3.4 In case of non-performance of his duties any Judge will be removed from the Judging Committee by the Organizer.
3.5 The Organizer will appoint a Chairperson to the Judging Committee to act as moderator. The said Chairperson will provide guidance to the judging teams and will resolve problems should they arise (e.g. a tie or a huge discrepancy in scores, conflict of interests, final decision). Moreover, the Chairperson will work closely with the Organizer to safeguard the robust standards and ethics of the judging process.
3.6 The Judging Committee will use an advanced screening and scoring methodology based on publicly available data and/or internal information provided by the candidate entities along with supporting material. The above-described screening and scoring methodology may be revised at any time by the Organizer. The Judging process will be online and will take place between 15 of March to end of April 2024.
3.7 The Organizer, upon the recommendation of the Judging Committee, reserves the right, after the submission of nominations, to merge or cancel categories, as well as to transfer nominations to a different category.
3.8 Once the evaluation period has been completed and the platform is closed, only the members of the Judging Committee and the Organizer have access to all the individual evaluations, the comments of the Judges and the scores for each nomination, thus validating the results and the procedure.
3.9 Strict rules of conflict of interest apply both to the Judging Committee and the selection process. For that purpose, every Judge prior taking up his duties should sign a Non-Disclosure Statement regulating among other and issues related to conflict of interest. Assessment and Scoring is secret and strictly personal to ensure the objectivity of the results and to ensure that the member of the Judging Committee is not influenced by the scores or opinions of others.
The Judging Committee do not score:
- Nominations submitted by a company/entity where they work for,
- Nominations submitted by a third company (e.g., a client) concerning a project/transaction/case in which the company any of the members of the Judging Committee works for was involved.
In any case, while filling in a nominee’s evaluation form all members of the Judging Committee are bound to declare the existence of any relationship with the latter (i.e., the nominee) and to notify immediately the Organizer of any such relationship. The Organizer upon receipt of such a notification will assign to the Judging Committee (excluding the Judge concerned) to decide by majority if the member of the Judging Committee that has a relationship with a nominee that may result in conflict-of-interest must be disqualified from the scoring process.
3.10 The members of the Judging Committee process the data contained in the submitted entries solely for the purpose of evaluating the entries assigned to them in the context of the Awards and any use of such data by the judges for their own benefit or for any other purpose not directly related to the task of evaluating the entries and selecting the winners of the Awards is expressly prohibited.
3.11 The selection process is covered by strict confidentiality. The candidates will be kept confidential, and no public disclosure of nominations will be made except for those companies that are selected as the winners and finalists. Any nomination submitted and its supporting material will be kept confidential by the Organizer and the Judging Panel.
3.12 Once the selection process is completed, finalists will be informed individually to attend the Award Winners’ ceremony that will take place at the Grand Hyatt Athens on Monday, 20 May 2024 (the “Event”). Winners are considered the three (3) finalists of each Award’s category and will be announced at the Event. The winners may refer to their award (indicatively and not limited to social media, press releases, print and electronic media) using the title thereof as it has been awarded (verbatim) by the Organizer. Any variation of the award title (including its translation from Greek to English and vice versa) is expressly prohibited, unless expressly consented to in writing by the Organizer, the latter not being liable for any damage caused to participants of the Event or any third party, in case of non-compliance with the above. The winners shall attend and receive the award with their representative at the Awards Ceremony in May 2024 and attend in October 2024 the ESG Shipping Awards THE CONFERENCE, to discuss their winning practices.
4. SELECTION CRITERIA & AWARD REQUIREMENTS
4.1 The evaluation of the nominations by the Judging Committee is based on the information submitted by the candidates in their application. The Organizer is not obliged to check the truth, correctness and accuracy of the information submitted by the candidates. However, the Organizer has the right to cancel and/or disqualify and/or not award a nomination if it comes to its attention or if there are indications that the information submitted is false or inaccurate, or if essential elements have been omitted in the submitted nomination. In this relevance, if requested to do so, candidates should be able to provide evidence of what is stated in the application file. In any case, however, the Organizer and the Judging Committee will not be held responsible in case of false or inaccurate statements, or suppression of essential information in a nomination.
4.2 Candidates must demonstrate best practices in relation to each ESG Award Category. Best practices are considered effective ESG focused activities, governance, strategy, policies, procedures, KPIs, targets, training, performance monitoring, assessment, and certification. This information gives insight into the profile and scale of the organization and provides a context to the Judging Committee for understanding the organization’s impact in each of ESG category, i.e.:
- ESG Leader Award
Participants must demonstrate best practices in relation to: Environment, Social, and Governance and in accordance with the ESG international standards such as ESRS, GRI, SASB, UN Global Compact, SDGs, or any other ESG standards. - ESG Environment Leader Award
Participants must demonstrate best practices in relation to at least any of the following: Environmental management, Air emissions, Energy efficiency, Pollution prevention, Biodiversity, Climate change, Water management, Circular economy. - ESG Climate Change Leader Award
Participants must demonstrate best practices in relation to at least any of the following: Decarbonization plan, GHG emissions reduction, Climate related risk management, Energy management, Climate Related Strategy, Sustainable investments. - ESG Social Leader Award
Participants must demonstrate best practices in relation to at least any of the following: Labor working conditions, Employee development, Community contribution, Health & Safety, Diversity & Inclusion, Human Rights, Value Chain, Suppliers. - ESG Community Contribution Leader Award
Participants must demonstrate best practices in relation to at least any of the following: Corporate social responsibility and Philanthropic Activities, Support local communities, Charitable Donations, and Volunteer programs. - ESG Governance Leader Award
Participants must demonstrate best practices in relation to at least any of the following: Board Effectiveness, Board Independence, Board diversity, Code of Conduct, Antibribery & anti-corruption, Whistleblowing, Materiality assessment, Risk and Crisis management, Stakeholder engagement. - ESG Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Leader Award
Participants must demonstrate best practices in relation to at least any of the following: Working environment, Non-Discrimination and Anti-Harassment policy, Fair treatment practices, Gender Diversity, Equal Remuneration, Human Rights, Freedom of association. - ESG People Leader Award
Participants must demonstrate best practices in relation to at least any of the following: Human Capital Development, Talent Attraction & Retention, Reskilling & Upskilling, Occupational Health & Safety, Performance Appraisal. - ESG Technology Leader Award
Participants must demonstrate best practices in relation to any Technology, Innovation, Research & Development that prevent ESG related risks and capture ESG opportunities such as Energy transition, Digital transformation, Cybersecurity etc. - ESG Industry Partnership Leader Award
Participants must demonstrate best practices in relation to at least any of the following: Supplier partnership and collaboration, Supply chain transparency, Supply chain performance, Supplier assessment.
For more information about the selection criteria please click HERE.
5. Personal Data
5.1 The Organizer will not collect any personally identifiable information about the entities that have submitted a nomination (name, address, telephone number or email address (“personal data”) through the Website unless they have provided their consent for that through the registration form from the Awards Website.
5.2 In compliance with the 2018 General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), the Organizer may collect information about the computer used to visit the Website, including IP addresses, operating system and browser types, for system administration. This is statistical data about the Organizer’s users’ browsing actions and patterns and does not identify any individual.
5.3 The Organizer reserves the right to use elements of the text of the nomination, which have not been declared as confidential, trademarks and distinctive features of the participants (i.e., judges, candidates, sponsors) in the context of promoting the Awards.
6. Intellectual property
6.1 The Organizer is the exclusive owner of the trademark, distinctive title and branding element “ESG Shipping Awards” (ESG Brand). The Organizer will grant a limited license to the winners awards as well as to its partners (i.e., sponsors, ambassadors, supporters etc.) to use labels that bear the ESG brand, for the sole purpose of promoting their annual participation in the “ESG Shipping Awards” competition and declaring compliance with the principles thereof, indicatively on their website, social media, press release, as well as in any other printed or electronic means of advertising and promotion, without any modification or alteration thereof. The winners may use the labels for an unlimited time, while the partners have the right to use the labels only for the duration of their contract with the Organizer. The supporters have the right to use the labels for as long as they are in agreement with the Organizer in the capacity as a Supporter.
6.2. Any unauthorized use of the label (either in whole or in part) is expressly prohibited.
7. Liability
7.1 The Organizer is not responsible for:
- any damage, loss, injury or disappointment suffered for entry into the Awards or as a result of accepting one of the awards;
- any loss or damage that is not reasonably foreseeable; or
- any injury or damage to an entrant’s or any other person’s computer systems relating to their participation in the Awards and associated events, including the Event.
7.2 The Organizer reserves the right to withdraw the Award from a winner at its reasonable discretion, if inter alia:
- The Organizer or the Judging Committee discover at any time and in any way (through a complaint, evidence, etc.) that the information submitted by the winner is unreliable, untrue or not in line with the best practices of the relevant industry or the winner in any way engages in “greenwashing”, or
- The winner and/or their representative(s) or agent(s) commit an offence related to the criteria of the award received or any other action not consistent with ESG criteria within one (1) year from the Award Winners’ ceremony.
8. General Terms
8.1 The Awards and these Rules are governed by Greek law and any disputes in relation to them are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Athens.
8.2 The present Rules may be revised at any time by the Organizer. In this relevance, any interested person is expected to check the Organizer’s Website from time to time to take notice of any potential changes. Moreover, some of the provisions contained in these Rules may also be superseded by provisions or notices published elsewhere on the Organizer’s Website.
