Clean Ships, Clean Ports, Clean Oceans: Controlling Garbage and Plastic Wastes at Sea (1995)
Chapter: Technological Innovations
for its analysis by identifying five general approaches that might yield successful interventions and that, taken together, would cover all aspects of maritime activities. These five approaches were selected based on the committee's judgment, but, fortuitously, they also are suggested by Annex V. Specifically, the committee proposes that potent interventions to support successful implementation of Annex V can come from
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technological innovations,
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organizational and operational changes,
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educational communications,
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government and private regulation and enforcement, and
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economic incentives.
These five approaches were incorporated, along with the elements identified by Kasperson and Pijawka, into a generic matrix designed by the committee. In the matrix, the rows represent the five general intervention approaches, and the columns represent the boxes (as modified) from the Kasperson and Pijawka flow diagram.
To illustrate the strength of the hazard evolution concept in clarifying the unfamiliar, the committee used its generic matrix to analyze the intervention options permitted and encouraged by Annex V regulations and the International Maritime Organization (IMO) Guidelines for the Implementation of Annex V (Garbage), which propose an integrated garbage management regime that combines waste reduction, treatment, and disposal strategies. (Table 3-1 illustrates this application of the model.) The following commentary on this application of the matrix also describes the general intervention approaches and establishes why the committee found them so appropriate to the hazard in question.
Technological Innovations
While most pollution-control technology to date has been designed to minimize the release of waste into the environment, technology also can assist in reducing both the amount of waste generated and exposure to the waste once it is introduced into the environment. Clearly, technology could be a useful intervention at numerous stages in the evolution of the hazard posed by vessel garbage. Table 3-1 shows how both Annex V and the IMO implementation guidelines encourage the use of technologies to intervene against the hazard at every step.
In some cases, new technology may be needed, or existing technology may require further development to make it suitable for use on vessels or in port reception facilities. Research by the U.S. Navy has demonstrated some of the possibilities in garbage treatment equipment for military use. According to the four criteria established by Navy developers, shipboard systems should (1) be appropriate to handle the garbage generated by ships with different populations
