Reducing plastic waste from our operations

Every year, eight million metric tons of plastics enter our oceans. We will do our share to reduce this problem. And the whole organisation is working on new ways to reach our goals.

You have probably seen the videos and the photos. Plastics has been found in more than 90% of all seabirds. It has been found in 100% of sea turtles species, that mistake plastic for food. When animals ingest plastic, it can cause life-threatening problems. It is estimated that there are already 244 million metric tons of plastics in the marine environment.

In G2 Ocean we use and discard plastics every day. We receive it with the things we buy. We use it in the offices and operations. And our customers use it to protect their cargo. The challenge is what happens with the plastics after use.

In our environmental policy we have set out our commitment to support and enhance our environmental performance by:

Protecting the environment and hindering adverse environmental impacts through prevention of pollution;
Preserving the natural environment from harm and degradation arising from the organisation’s activities and services;
Sustainable resource utilisation;

We say we are pioneering sustainable shipping solutions. Reducing the plastics waste is a part of this.

In G2 Ocean we have looked at how we can do something with this problem. In 2019 we will focus on three areas: Equipment, procurement and offices.

One of the measures we have taken, is to recycle all old polyester web slings. These slings are crucial to our operations, as we use them for lifting and securing cargo. But it has been challenging to find good alternatives to delivering old or damaged slings to onshore land fills.

We have now, together with our good partners, managed to get in place a system for recycling these slings. When they go our of operation, we will gather them in containers in some of the ports we visit. Our own ships will then ship these containers to a few dedicated recycling facilities. There they will be shredded and turned into polyester felt mats, used for insulation, fillings and so on.

We have almost 700,000 polyester web slings in service at any given time. It goes without saying that we have to discard a lot of these each year. With our new recycle system, this plastic will have new life, and reduce the waste dramatically.

We use web slings to lift and secure the cargo we transport.

Old and damaged web slings stored onshore.

The slings are shredded and made into felt mats