Shipowners keen to get rid of their scrubber discharges in Southeast Asia’s largest port will need to fork out a sizeable sum.
The Maritime and Port Authority (MPA) of Singapore has ruled that exhaust gas cleaning residues generated by ships have been classified as toxic industrial waste and as such the residues must be collected and managed by licensed toxic industrial waste collectors who can then arrange for the waste to be offloaded in packaged form or in intermediate bulk container tanks directly to trucks and MPA licensed harbour craft for ships at berth and at anchorages, respectively.
Splash is awaiting some price quotations from a number of approved local toxic waste collectors.
The MPA has made its stance on scrubbers clear, becoming one of the most high profile port bodies to ban the discharge of wash water from open-loop exhaust gas scrubbers in local waters.
Quite right.
It really does beggar belief; when these rules are being enforced to stop pollutants from being pumped into the air, an alarming number of people think that an acceptable solution is to dump them into the water instead.
I don’t understand why more ports/countries aren’t taking Singapore’s position.