Stricter rules for the transport of plastic pellets on cargo ships are being worked on. Now that transport regularly causes environmental disasters.
The plastic granules that wash up on beaches are sometimes called ‘Mermaid tears’. It is a beautiful word that conceals how harmful those marbles are to nature. Chemical companies produce billions of those granules every year. They go on the cargo ship in sea containers, to customers far away. They make plastic bags out of it, or slides or toothbrushes. But if things go wrong with such a ship full of grains, things go wrong.
On May 20, 2021 things went horribly wrong in Sri Lanka. The freighter X-Press Pearl caught fire and sank off the coast of the capital Colombo. 11,000 tons of plastic granules leaked from the containers into the water and 750 kilometers of coastline became polluted. The cleaning is still going on.
Marine life harmed
“The granules, which are called pellets, are small and float away. They can spread over a large area under the influence of tides, waves, weather and wind. Furthermore, it is difficult to dispose of the grains without harming marine life,” says Jasper Faber, who researched measures for CE Delft to prevent such damage.
The Netherlands knows all too well how miserable that pollution is, since the cargo ship MSC Zoe lost a few hundred containers in 2019. Volunteers have determined that more than 24 million plastic pellets from that ship washed up on the beaches of the Wadden Islands.
South Africa’s beaches were littered with millions of plastic pellets in 2017, and once more in 2020. From ships that transport the raw materials of the plastics industry. The granules of a few millimeters are often made from petroleum. In recent years, many grains have also washed ashore in Norway and Sweden, and once more this year in France and Dubai.
Larger chunks
“The pellets are transported in one large bag inside the sea container, or in smaller bags,” says Faber. “These bags easily leak when loading or unloading. Moreover, sea containers are often not completely closed, so that the pellets end up in the sea.”
Why isn’t the basic plastic transported in larger chunks, so that they are easier to fish out of the water? “That would provide an extra step in the processing of the plastic. The entire industry is geared to grains. Every plastics manufacturer should adapt its machines,” says Faber.
After the X-Press Pearl disaster, Sri Lanka asked the international community to take action. To designate plastic granules as a ‘dangerous substance’ from now on, which means stricter rules for transport. That call has set the necessary in motion at the International Maritime Organization (IMO), a UN organization that is in fact the legislator at sea.
Under the chairmanship of Norway and in consultation with insurers, the chemical industry, the transport sector and environmental organisations, a number of possible measures have been listed. This will be discussed at the IMO in April and then a decision can be made in July by the Marine Environment Protection Committee.
Less risk
What would help? Faber: “First of all better packaging. It also helps if the containers with plastic are not on deck, but below deck, where the risk is smaller. If a ship gets into trouble, the authorities must be informed immediately that there are plastic pellets on board. Then they can take that into account in their clean-up actions.”
One way to regulate this is to ensure that plastic granules are given ‘hazardous substance’ status at the UN. “If IMO member countries choose to do so, it would immediately lead to significant improvements in the way pellets are packaged, labeled and transported around the world,” said Tanya Cox, technical specialist at Fauna & Flora, an international environmental organization.
Better packaging would lead to higher costs for plastic producers. Tanya Cox points out that the clean-up costs of a serious incident are now borne by many. “By national governments, insurance companies and of course nature. In the followingmath of the disaster in Sri Lanka, the coastline was so heavily polluted that inshore fisheries were closed. Which means local communities had no access to food. Tourism was also significantly affected.”
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