148,135
It's (unfortunately) not neccecarily the shipping companies themselves that care about the envirement, but rather the IMO
http://www.imo.org/en/Pages/Default.aspx That does. Wich is part of the united nations.
And yeah, gladly they care a lot! They made tonnes of conventions and treaties that ships and companies have to comply to, in order to improve their safety and enviremental friendliness.
An example to this is the bilge water end valve.
If you want to pump anything overboard it goes trough there. Soo they put a sensor in the line, and an automatic overboard valve that closes when it detects more than 15 ppm of oil in the pipe. It also closes when it detects zero ppm of oil, because that implies that some wanker shoved a hose with drinking water down the sensor and is intending to pump sludge oil overboard...
And it goes without saying port state controll checks if you have, among other things, that thing aboard, And if it works at all...
This year the ballast water tready will also become operative.
This will prohibit ships from discharging untreated ballast water overboard.
Because the microbiological life in the ballast water you take aboard in, lets say, Singapore, could do a lot of damage in, lets say, Scandinavia.
(That's how we've got the wolhandkrab (chinese woolhandcrab) here in the Netherlands...)
And restrictions on sulphur percentages in crude oil are also going up!
Right now you're not allowed to burn crude oil in the vicinity of the coast, and / or protected natural areas. And in the near future, crude oil is going to be banned in its entirety! And the diesel oil you'll be forced to use then, wich is already a lot cleaner, will become ever more cleaner!
Sorry if I'm ranting a bit...
Our high-voltage teacher showed us all this stuff on how much higher the standards for ships are getting in regards to enviremental friendliness and his excitement is rather contageous...