Hamburg Tackles Illegal Ship Waste Dumping

All ships calling at the Port of Hamburg are now allowed to dispose of the six-times higher amount of waste at no extra charge as an incentive to prevent waste from ships being dumped illegally into the sea.

An estimated 20,000 cubic meters of ship waste gets dumped in the North Sea every year.

The cost of a standard disposal of waste from the shipping industry at the Port of Hamburg, including the ship sanitation, remained between EUR 10 and 105, dependent on vessel size.

This has been determined by the new Ship Waste Discharge Regulation (SchiffAbgV) introduced by the Hamburg Senate on July 3, 2015.

”Plastic waste pollutes the oceans. Up to 600,000 cubic meters of garbage is suspected alone to cover the seabed of the North Sea. Ship waste on the seabed is a major problem for fish, plants and the marine ecosystem. Plastic takes hundreds of years until it breaks down. Degrading micro-plastic enters the food chain and kills seabirds,” said Jens Kerstan, Hamburg Minister of the Environment.

The adopted ship waste charges regulation were realigned to meet the changes in fleet structure since fewer but much larger vessels call at the port of Hamburg.

For the first time, a quantitative limit for sanitation has been introduced. In addition, the allowances for oil residues have been increased.

The disposal of residues from gas cleaning systems (scrubber sludge) will be subsidised with up to EUR 450 in future.