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Sailcargo, sailtraining and wind-assisted ship propulsion

Windassist

Sailcargo, sailtraining and wind-assisted ship propulsion

News

Cargo lost overboard is public environmental information

Information on lost cargo that ends up in the sea should be considered environmental information and should therefore be made public. Good news for CleanUpXL, which can now use the location data to search for waste in a more targeted way.

While the government was initially reluctant to provide information about the lost cargo, recently, following a request, the Master Target List was released, a list of sonar images taken by the shipowner MSC of 6,000 objects lying on the seabed following the disaster. Such as the contents of the containers of the MSC Zoe that went overboard five years ago, which were scattered around the Wadden area. Only 1800 of the 6000 objects were cleaned up by the shipowner MSC, as this was cargo that could be shown to have come from the MSC Zoe.

Woo request

The Leiden Advocacy Project on Plastic filed the request based on the Open Government Act and was vindicated after an objection. Information about the salvage of lost containers provided by the shipowner to the coastal state must be made public to anyone who requests it, without regard to the importance of confidential business information. At the time of the disaster, it was very difficult to get good information about the cargo. In future incidents, the duty to disclose allows a better picture to be formed of the size and nature of the lost cargo and more appropriate action to be taken in clean-up operations.

800,000 kilos of waste within five years

The CleanUpXL project is a collaboration between the Wadden Association, De Noordzee Foundation, the Frisian Environmental Federation, Stichting Duik de Noordzee Schoon and salvage companies and aims to clear 800,000 kilos of waste from the seabed within five years. Under the slogan “What are we going to do with that mess in the sea?”, the project is currently running an awareness campaign against marine litter. Source: Waddenvereniging.Photo: made available by the Central Command for Maritime Emergencies (Havariekommando).

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