I'm keen to give you an update on the work we've been doing following the dreadful marine pollution incidents this year, caused by the release of the hazardous substance polyisobutene (or PIB).
Even though there are luckily no more seabirds being washed up covered in PIB, we’re still working hard to press the UK Government for answers in the short term (through the investigations by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency) on how, and by whom, the PIB was released into the sea. In the longer term, we’re also calling for PIB, which is currently legal to discharge under certain conditions, to be reclassified under the global shipping regulations (the MARPOL Convention), so that it cannot be released in any quantity.
On that note, I attended a meeting last week with the Shipping Minister, the Rt Hon Stephen Hammond, organized by Sarah Wollaston MP, to explain our concerns and hear how the UK Government have been responding. That's me in the centre by the way. The meeting was extremely constructive – to gain an hour of a Minister’s time shows he and the Department for Transport are clearly taking the issue seriously.
It’s clear that the UK is doing lots of work behind the scenes to try and find the source of the PIB pollution, and we have been assured that the findings of the MCA’s investigations will be published. We were also reassured also that the UK is playing an active role in the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) with regards to ‘Hazardous and Noxious Substances’ (HNS) , the poor cousin to oil-based products, and will be taking a report on the safety of releasing these products to the IMO in 2014. This would be a precursor to potentially making the case for reclassifying PIB specifically with the IMO. We'll be keeping in touch with the MCA and Department for Transport over the coming months to ensure that this important work is carried forward.
The light thrown on PIB in the last few months reflects the growing demand for these substances around the world. As regular oil pollution has decreased thanks to stricter regulation and enforcement, transport of non-oil products of all kinds, from palm oil to PIB, are on the rise. PIB, for example, covers a range of products with different properties and weights, and we're now seeing new forms of PIB being developed and transported which are largely untested for their environmental impacts. It's time that the testing under the MARPOL Convention caught up.
Photo credit: Sarah Wollaston