IMO urged for MARPOL sewage rethink

摘要

German group ACO Marine has joined other wastewa-ter treatment system manufacturers and environmental organisations in calling for a revision of MARPOL Annex Ⅳ - the regulations for preventing sewage pollution. The organisations are seeking to verify the perfor-mance and discharge criteria of onboard sewage treatment systems. While there are existing rules in place for validating discharge parameters, they only relate to type-approval testing on land-based establish-ments. Once a system has been installed and becomes operational, there is no further enforcement of the wastewater discharge criteria. "The main contention is that we believe there are type-approved systems in operation at sea that are scientifically incapable of treating sewage waste," said Mark Beavis, ACO Marines Managing Director.