This is a question that we get all the time, and it is a reasonable one. After all, our products will have to travel halfway across the world just to get to Singapore.
Well, the answer might just surprise you.
If you’d like the short version, here’s a colourful infographic that briefly explains the environmental benefits of purchasing building materials from the West. (Right click, and select “Open Image in New Tab” to enlarge it.)
Want more? Here’s a detailed explanation.
1. Empty Container Repositioning
- Every year, of all the containers being moved around the world, approximately 1/3 of them are empty. That makes approximately 60 million empty container moves every year.
- Of these, 2/3 occur because of trade imbalances between regions.
- For example, the Europe-Asia and Trans-Pacific trade routes.
- This is because European ports and American ports have a high surplus of empty containers, whereas Asian ports are facing severe shortages.
- Furthermore, there is more demand for exports from Asia than from Europe or America. The time it takes to accumulate load in Europe and American costs more than to just send the empty containers back to Asia.
- In other words, empty or not, those containers will be sent, and the creation of pollution will happen, regardless.
2. Fuel Consumption between Loaded and Empty Containers
- One might argue that a lighter ship with empty containers would require less fuel to travel from one region to another. Less fuel = smaller carbon footprint. Those savings must count for something, right?
- Unfortunately, those savings do not exist.
- Firstly, a light ship is an unbalanced ship, and that poses a danger to the ship and its crew. To counter how light a ship carrying empty containers is, these ships will fill its ballast tanks with sea water to weigh the ship down. Therefore, it will be just as heavy.
- Secondly, fuel usage is not determined by weight. Rather, it is determined by the size and shape of the ship, and ship at which it is travelling.
- The faster these ships get back to Asia, the more trips they can make per year. Every trip = profits. So, they will definitely be going as fast as they possibly can. Especially if they want to make up for the losses incurred from shipping empty containers.
- In other words, heavy or light, the fuel consumed will be the same, or even more. Likewise, the carbon footprint created will be just as much or more.
3. Ballast Water Discharge Causes Ecological, Economic & Health Damages
- When these ships travel from region to region, the ballast tanks will be emptied wherever they need to load up with full containers.
- The consequence of this: non-native organisms and pathogens found in the ballast water and sediments in ballast tanks are being dumped in the wrong parts of the world, inflicting extensive economic and ecological damage on marine biodiversity in many regions.
- For example: There are 818 ports in the Pacific region, and Singapore alone accounts for approximately 26% of cross-region (specifically, long-range) species exchange has occurred.
- In 1988, the arrival of a single freighter to Lake St. Clair resulted in the infestation of 5 Great Lakes with Zebra Mussels, a native of the Caspian and Black seas. The economic cost from the damages caused by this one event is estimated at approximately US$5 billion.
- Even health is threatened. A form of cholera that was previously only found in Bangladesh was brought to Peru via ballast tank discharge. The result was the deaths of approximately 10,000 over a span of 3 years.
- In short, by loading up these empty container ships with goods, these occurrence or likelihood of these ecological, economical and health damages could be mitigated.
We aren’t joking or exaggerating when we say that choosing Terra-Eco is the greener choice. With every container, we help the environmental, even if just a little bit. Because every little bit counts.
Ready to work with us? Let’s chat!
Sources:
- Container-Xchange
- Dong-Ping Song, and Jing-Xin Dong. “Empty Container Repositioning.” Handbook of Ocean Container Transport Logistics, Jan. 2015, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11891-8_6.
- “Environmental benefits from reducing empty container movements” by Emelie Borg, KTH ROYAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
- Advanced Polymer Coatings
- Lindstad, Haakon, and Gunnar S. Eskeland. “Low Carbon Maritime Transport: How Speed, Size and Slenderness Amounts to Substantial Capital Energy Substitution.” Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, vol. 41, 2015, pp. 244–256., https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2015.10.006.
- The Geography of Transport Ships
- Wikipedia
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