"Do we really have to carry this stuff?"
It is a question that has surely been asked, in innumerable languages, by deck officers down the ages. I remember asking it myself, after a drum of some filthy, inadequately packaged chemical leaked and contaminated a whole tweendeck on a commonwealth liner, many years ago.
The answer was in the affirmative, because the irresponsible outfit that packed the chemical was one of our biggest shippers and we could not afford to irritate this bad-tempered customer.
It is a question that seems to have become quite current once again, with some of the awful cargoes that not only threaten the ship, but the lives of those aboard.
Take, for instance, the repeated warnings from P&I clubs, specialists, and others of the risks from electrical goods with lithium-ion batteries already loaded into them, doubtless immaculately packaged and ready for the delighted consumer and carefully stuffed into containers. It is all supposed to be properly documented, but seemingly impossible to police, as the batteries get bigger and more powerful and they multiply like amoeba.
Even worse, and an inevitable consequence of our new electric age, is the huge amount of waste batteries of every conceivable sort that now find their way into export cargoes. They cause daily fires in shore-side waste treatment plants because people cannot be bothered to separate these from their “normal” rubbish, so why would they not be doing the same, when they inadvertently find their way into scrap being shipped from the ports?
Regular fires in holds, very difficult to extinguish and inevitably seriously damaging the ship, are attributed to this cause of ignition. It is the lucky ones which ignite in port, where they can be dealt with; those at sea are another problem entirely. And with electric vehicles taking over the car export sea-lanes, while their hazards are becoming better understood, the means of dealing with the hazards of used and waste batteries from these huge numbers are definitely not understood.
There has always been a trade in used vehicles, which tend to gravitate from the more advanced economies downwards, but we really have not fully grasped the problems caused by a fast-growing number of old and sometimes badly damaged EVs appearing for shipment. Why is it necessary to ship this potentially hazardous cargo internationally on large and expensive car carriers, risking the ships and those aboard them?
It is said that these vehicles are inspected before being accepted for shipment. That might be the intention, but you can guarantee, at the pace these ships turn around, that this inspection will be predicated on speed and not thoroughness. Why cannot this rubbish be recycled closer to home?
The benefits of world trade and the availability of cheap shipping are well documented, but it is an argument that so much of the stuff carried about aboard ships could be labelled as downright anti-social. Why are we hauling thousands of tons of chemicals that are of little intrinsic value, serve to purify the world’s swimming pools, and catch fire if the sun shines on them as they sit in their deck slots on giant container ships?
Boxes stuffed with charcoal, for goodness sake! Can this low-value and potentially hazardous stuff not be fashioned locally? Why should my Bechstein concert grand, lovingly stowed in a container, be placed between a box of flammable charcoal and one of explosive chemicals, each cheaper than chips?
It’s not trade; it’s foolishness, but nobody, shipper or carrier, will confront the problem.
And the latest world nuisance is, of course, “nurdles,” which ought to be a word invented by Lewis Carroll, but have become a burden and curse to all who have to clear these plastic beads from waters and foreshores after they have been spilt.
You can now almost guarantee that if a container falls over the side, or is washed off a collapsing stack, its bursting doors will open to reveal a trillion or so nurdles, to be washed up and down in the tide.
They may seem relatively harmless, compared to some of the horrors that lurk between the steel walls of containers, but the cost of retrieving them dwarves the value of many of the ships that had lost them. At long last, there are new recommendations for their packaging, but bearing in mind their potential harm to the environment, is there no better way of shipping simple raw material for plastics?
And, back to the ultimate question: “Do we really have to carry this stuff?”
