Reducing Consumption of Single-Use Plastic Water Bottles Onboard

Since the first week of June 2020, Ship Management has begun supplying steel water bottles on board our managed vessels for our seafarers’ use.

This is part of our ongoing initiative to reduce consumption of singleuse plastic water bottles. Each seafarer will receive a steel water bottle for them to refill at water dispensers that are installed onboard vessels. These bottles are personal gifts to the crew where they can take it home when they sign off and to be brought in as part of their PPE when sign on again.

Majority of the bottles will be delivered on board at centralised locations. Centralizing the distribution point is a conscious decision to ensure that that the bottles are distributed with minimal carbon footprint. This is just the beginning of our efforts to reduce single use plastic. There are still a lot of work needed to reduce single-use plastic water bottles consumption onboard. Moving forward, we will be focusing on campaigns to encourage crew to drink from water dispensers.

Many of those whom have sailed in the early days are living proof that water onboard is safe for consumption. All our managed vessels comply with mandatory safe water drinking standards required by related regulations. However over the years, perception grew that water source is safer coming from bottled plastics rather than taps. This could be due to people’s experience onshore where in some countries, clean drinking water is not available from taps. Our efforts moving forward will be to change this general perception.

Since the launch of our #makingadifference campaign last year, we have started planting seeds of thoughts about plastics onboard and shore.

Our offices on shore has already made that lifestyle change. Majority of our offices are on zero plastic water bottle usage. We have also tighten our vendor selection criteria. Our vendors will need to demonstrate a viable plan to reduce plastic usage. To bring the industry together towards the same goal, we have also hosted roundtable discussions with our vendors and several leading industry player to discuss on how might we reduce and reuse plastic together.

That is not the end. We are still continuing our efforts to achieve zero single-use plastics on board.