Caribbean set to ban the discharge of all non-food waste anywhere in its waters

Right now, at any given time, there are hundreds of cruise ships, tankers, bulk carriers, fishing vessels and pleasure craft frequenting the waters of the Wider Caribbean, a huge area of ocean of around 3.3 million square kilometers. The Wider Caribbean is home to 28 nations, either island nations or countries with a coastline on the Caribbean.

For these countries, tourism is a major industry. Holidaymakers travel from all over the world to experience the iconic clear waters and lush underwater ecosystems that characterize this region of the world.

Maritime traffic poses a major threat to these countries then, for every day hundreds of tons of waste is dumped by the many ships that transit the waters of the Caribbean. For years now, a ban has been in place, prohibiting the disposal of any waste within 3 miles of the coast anywhere in the Wider Caribbean, but past this boundary, any garbage, apart from plastic can be thrown overboard, as long as it is ground up into pieces no larger than an inch across.

This ban was hard-won by the nations of the Caribbean; there was fierce opposition to it from major cruise lines that run regular Caribbean cruises. When the ban was first implemented it was done so by single countries in the region, and in retaliation cruise lines cut them from their itineraries, severely affecting that country’s tourism industry, which then forced the country to back down.

It was only when the Wider Caribbean implemented the 3 mile ban as a region that cruise lines had no choice but to comply, and there is not a month that goes by without a report emerging of a cruise line illegally dumping prohibited waste within the 3 mile boundary.

Cruise lines that operate massive ships, sometimes carrying as many as 5000 people, have put themselves in a difficult situation, there ships are just too large and carry too many people for all their waste to be stored until they reach port. In a single day the average modern cruise ship could produce several tons of garbage, and not enough space is allocated onboard for the storage of this waste, so they dump it in the fragile waters of the Caribbean.

Every year, 900,000 tons of solid waste gets dumped into the oceans of the world, along with sewerage, grey water and oily bilge water. Cruise lines account for around a quarter of this, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. With 60% of all cruise traffic in the world occurring in the Caribbean, the strain on the environment becomes clear.

The Wider Caribbean, as a region, is taking steps to crack down on shipping companies even further now. Under the provisions of the U.N.'s International Maritime Organization, a piece of legislation called ‘Regulations for the Prevention of Pollution by Garbage from Ships Special Area Regulations’, the dumping all waste anywhere in the Caribbean will become illegal.

The only exception is the discharge of food produce, which, once ground up, can be dumped at sea beyond the 3 mile boundary. The new law will take effect in May of 2011, and the U.N. has indicated that it is the responsibility of Caribbean nations to independently examine ship’s logs to ensure compliance beyond that date.

This is an important step for the countries that make up the Wider Caribbean, although they depend heavily on tourism, it is an industry that can be potentially devastating for the sensitive ecosystems around every island and along every coastline, if these ecosystems are destroyed, and reefs and underwater life die, then there will be no reason to visit the Caribbean anymore, and the tourism industry will die as well.

In addition, local communities that rely on small-scale fishing activities will be severely affected.

It has taken the countries of the Caribbean over a decade to gain compliance from cruise lines and other shipping companies. Cruise lines were reluctant to acknowledge the ban, first suggested in 1993, until the countries of the Wider Caribbean had developed large-scale refuse disposal systems in popular cruise ship ports.

The Wider Caribbean has now satisfied this requirement, and the adoption of the new ban is a huge coup for the region and the U.N., which has also been fighting since 1993 to have the law put in place.

“It's a big deal,” IMO consultant Jeff Ramos said. “Especially in the Caribbean, with all the tankers and the traffic going to the Panama Canal, it will make a big impact.”

Cruise Lines International Association, a lobbyist group based in Florida, has said that the new law will not affect their member companies because they already operate within the requirements of the law, treating all solid waste as though the new ban were already in place. This is the official façade, but the marine litter that frequently washes up on Caribbean beaches tells a different story, and nations of the Wider Caribbean will need to monitor cruise lines and other shipping companies very closely.