Clean Ships, Clean Ports, Clean Oceans: Controlling Garbage and Plastic Wastes at Sea (1995)
Chapter: Efforts Involving Industry
dockside, and the collected materials were handled in a variety of ways. Some were taken by homeowners for use as decorations and for protecting fruit trees from pests, while other materials were shipped for recycling and remanufacture into other products. Other port recycling programs have been organized by the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission and the New Jersey Sea Grant Program, which also has conducted research to identify ways to increase use of the recycled materials. For a recycling project in California, the Coastal Resources Center developed a comprehensive set of educational materials, including information for port tenants that was translated into Vietnamese for the local Asian fishing community.
In 1990, MERP launched an initiative to design and implement a model port/ marina Annex V implementation project in Fajardo, Puerto Rico. This project, supported by Sea Grant personnel in Puerto Rico and New Jersey, was of strategic importance in that it extended MERP's focus from the North American coast to the Wider Caribbean region. Spanish-language educational materials, debris education programs, and an adequate port reception facility have been developed (Wypyszinski and Hernandez-Ariba, 1994).
In another type of outreach effort, the Coast Guard recently initiated the SEA-KEEPERS Campaign, a six-month pilot program in which some 270 reservists assigned to 47 port communities throughout the nation educated both civilian and military marine users about marine environmental protection laws, regulations, and strategies. Target groups included port operators, shipping agents, waste haulers, commercial fishing vessel operators, and recreational boaters. The Department of Defense funded this pilot program as part of the federal government's defense conversion strategy.
Efforts Involving Industry
In 1988, MERP launched the Shipping Industry Maxine Debris Education Plan. This program had two major components. The first involved development of a binder of informative materials to assist vessel operators in complying with Annex V. The binder, distributed to shipping organizations, included MARPOL placards, the plastic control and minimization plan, sample waste management plans, examples of port reception facilities, international guidelines for implementation of Annex V, various regulation and policies regarding MARPOL implementation, and commercial telephone numbers for Coast Guard Captains of the Port (Wallace, 1990).
The second component Of the plan, included in the activities of the MDIOs, was liaison with cruise line operators and owners. Activities included writing Annex V articles for cruise trade journals, presenting Annex V information at cruise trade meetings, producing and distributing brochures on the problem of vessel garbage, and development of a workshop presentation about Annex V compliance for members of cruise industries.
