Recycling Prevents Ocean Dumping

Educating seafarers about responsibility towards marine nature and the possibility to dispose their waste in harbours instead of at sea is necessary, according to Bek & Verburg managing director Daan van Mullem. It also helps to know that waste collection is included in the harbour dues.

Bek & Verburg’s close cooperation with environmentalist NGOs like KIMO (Local Authorities International Environmental Organisation) and the North Sea Foundation is something special in the maritime industry. Participation in initiatives like the Plastic Chain Coalition (in Dutch: Plastic Keten Akkoord) and the Industry Agreement on Plastic Recycling (in Dutch: Ketenakkoord Kunststofkringloop) as well as the Green Deal with government and industry partners to invest in reducing emissions and waste continuously, shows that Bek & Verburg is deeply serious about their care for the environment. ”Environmental care is our business”, Van Mullem explains.

”By collecting waste from ships, we help reduce the whole ecological footprint of maritime transport. For us, teaming up with organisations that work for a healthier maritime environment is a natural thing to do.” Van Mullem is convinced that in the future, the maritime industry will need to take responsibility for reducing emissions and waste -and show they do. Like any other business, success for maritime transporters will depend on their ability to adapt to social demands of responsible and even innovative operation. Teaming up with organisations that protect maritime wildlife or environment, will add marketing value to a company – but only if their involvement is substantial and sincere.

Fishing for waste

”In cooperation with the North Sea Foundation, we provided fishing vessels with big bags to collect the waste they pick up from their nets when trawling for fish on the sea bed”, Van Mullem explains. ‘‘Fishermen used to throw this waste back into the sea, but as they regularly navigate the same fishing grounds, they or their colleagues would pick up the same cans, pipes, and other trash over and over again. In an effort to clean up the fishing grounds, the litter is now collected. The waste removed from the fishing nets goes into the big bags, which we pick up when the fishermen return to the harbour. It is amazing to see how much waste lies at the bottom of the sea. What we collect, is the debris on the sea bottom at fishing grounds. One could imagine that the whole sea bed is strewn with trash like that. At least the fishing grounds that are often navigated by the fishing fleets, may be getting tidied up a bit over years of collecting the waste there.”

WMN No. 3 2014 28Collecting what fishing vessels pick up from the bottom of the sea is only a small part of the activities at Bek & Verburg. The company collects all kinds of waste from seagoing and inland vessels at the ports of Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Den Helder and Scheveningen. Their ten crane vessels and twelve barges dock alongside the ships that visit these harbours and lift the waste from the decks. ”We try to separate different materials as soon as possible in the process”, Van Mullem says. ”Some ships have separate containers for paper, metal and galley waste. That helps us. But even if they do not, we start dividing these materials as soon as we get aboard and transfer the waste into our ship. Usually, we operate our ships with three crew. Dividing the different materials aboard the client vessel is one of the tasks of this crew.” Bek & Verburg has hubs where smaller boats and trucks transfer the materials into bigger vessels, which eventually all go to the main collecting point at the Botlek in the port of Rotterdam. These hubs are in Europort, Den Helder, Amsterdam, IJmuiden and Scheveningen, the latter two harbours have an anchorage a couple of miles out of the shore and Bek & Verburg vessels also collect the waste from ships that lay there. The hubs also function for assembling the waste streams that come from offshore support vessels; after delivering supplies to offshore platforms and working vessels, these ships bring back the waste from the offshore industry.

Waste collection network

”We try to make it as easy as possible for ships’ crew to hand over their waste from the galley, from the engine room, from the holds and any other household waste to us”, Van Mullem ensures. ”Since our business is to collect waste from ships, our biggest competitor is still the sea. Of course, I understand that a captain has to operate his vessel in the most cost-effective way possible. As European regulation about waste collecting in sea ports was adapted in 2004, the cost of disposal from vessels into our collecting barges or trucks is included in the harbour dues. So instead of risking high fines for dumping waste into the sea, a captain should make use of the collecting services that have to be paid for, whether these services are used or not. There is a responsibility from the port authorities to advertise the opportunity to dispose a ship’s waste for free after having paid the obligatory environments’ fees included in the harbour dues. On top comes a lack of law enforcement when spills or dumped waste are found.” Bek & Verburg advised European legislators about the regulations prescribing port authorities to provide waste collection. ”We have worked some 15 years on setting up a good waste collection network and having ship owners choose to discard their rest product consciously”, says Van Mullem. ”We are glad to see that since 2004, the percentage of ships offering their waste during harbour visits, raised from seven to 70.”

No 3 MbH April-Mei 201 voor Website.jpg 28 1”There is no such thing as waste”, Van Mullem points out. ”There are only products that have been used that contain raw material for the construction of new materials. Of every load that comes in, 93 per cent is recycled into usable resources, be it as a fuel or raw material for production. We sort out the incoming loads into 156 different streams: most to leave our collection centre as raw material, some of it as fuel and only seven per cent has to be transferred to the waste treatment plant.”

Green awareness is not just a thing Bek & Verburg adverts towards clients: it is something they integrate into their own operations as well. The new crane vessel Invotis VIII and the crane in their dock at the main collection centre are equipped with efficient engines and after-treatment of exhaust gasses, thus complying to the Green Award criteria. Leading a family business, with son and grandson also in the workforce, Van Mullem is chairman at VOMS, the organisation of companies in environmental care for the marine industry. ”Waste management will evolve in ports around Europe”, he foresees. ”Ship crews will start separating materials aboard, more raw materials will be recycled and also waste collecting companies like ours will gain efficiency. There is no doubt that regulations will require tighter procedures for environmental care on an evolving scale and companies will have to adapt to them but may also adopt their own waste-reducing policies.”

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