In the past few weeks, the beaches of Guernsey have been flooded with toothbrushes, make-up remover and air fresheners. Too often ignored, the problem of containers lost at sea has a real impact. Inhabitants of the Channel Islands felt it at the beginning of March when sanitary products and plastic bottles were washed up.
In search of lost containers
The loss of containers is not an isolated case. Only in the past few weeks, disasters have occurred continuously. Lidl, Volkswagen, and Avant, are all brands that have lost containers at sea. Even if the brands are not directly responsible for the fall of the containers, they are responsible for their choice of shipowner, who should be respectful and diligent in terms of shipping safety.
Currently, this pollution is easily ignored because of low international standards. The example of the Felicity Ace speaks for itself: luxury cars were lost at sea off the Azores, in international waters, making any legal action difficult or impossible.
However, it is hard to ignore the environmental impact of such a disaster. Fuel, diesel, batteries, lithium, all these components are directly dumped into the ocean. The operations of localization and recovery are extremely expensive and sometimes not successful. Therefore, it is necessary to act upstream by reinforcing the legislative framework around the transport of goods by cargo.
Working towards consistent shipping regulations
Significant progress is being made to regulate container loss. The EU has submitted to the International Maritime Organization (IMO) a request for the standardization of lost container declarations based on the European model, which is far ahead in terms of safety.
But in practice, what does this mean?
If this request is approved by next autumn, it would ultimately provide standardized and accessible data on container losses.
When speaking in one voice, the European Union is offering a model already established in Europe that would compel shipowners to report their losses. Both on the circumstances of the loss itself and on the content transported.
Thus, a transparency of data could be established and allow to lift the lack of current legislation.
The EU represents 40% of the world’s shipping fleet, and by submitting this proposal, it is a big step towards a more global and ambitious regulation of maritime transport of goods.
Surfrider Europe wants to go even further
Surfrider welcomes the progress of the IMO, but as we already specified in our dedicated report in 2018, it is not enough. The goal is to act upstream to really encourage shipowners to prevent any risks and all negative impacts linked to the loss of containers, both on the environment and human health.
These 10 recommendations focus on strengthening the current international legislative framework to anticipate incidents.
A clear legal status, a respect of the standards in terms of loading or a progressive decommissioning of too old cargo ships would lead us to a drastic reduction of container losses.
Surfrider Europe urges governments to take a clear position to deal with the avoidable problem of loss containers.
