Sustainability

In earlier years, the ocean seemingly provided us with both an endless supply of food and a bottomless pit for our waste. Human activity was literally just a drop in it. Sure, it provided obstacles and challenges as well, but what didn’t occur to us until recently, is that we might be hurting it … and that it needs our help.

Now we know, but how did we get to this point? How could frail, little creatures like ourselves threaten the health of the globe-spanning ocean?

Our intentions were never bad. We just wanted to make life better, safer and easier for ourselves, something we’re really good at. In the wild, inhospitable polar regions of Norway, we have a great deal of experience with seeing traditional building materials consistently lose the battle against nature. We’ve also benefited greatly from the invention of new, better, non-degradable materials, as have nearly every settlement around the world, from huge metropolises to remote research facilities and everywhere in between.

The problem is that we never stopped improving. Luckily that’s also the solution. Eventually, the materials we came up with became, while incredibly practical, essentially too robust for nature to break down within reasonable time. Plastics, metals, chemicals – they’re double edged swords. Very useful in the right circumstances, and very harmful in the wrong. It turns out that the ocean is neither bottomless nor endless in its riches. Faced with modern, non-degradable waste, maritime ecosystems are actually quite vulnerable.

So what can we do? The first step is to stop filling the ocean with waste. Delitek was founded for this very purpose. Instead of throwing our waste overboard, we need to store it until until the ship reaches land. This takes up a lot of space onboard, so in order to do it most effectively, we must first process it. And to do that, we need machines that exceed the robustness of whatever it’s processing.

Nobody makes onboard waste handling equipment like Delitek. The almost instinctive obsession with quality provided by centuries of battling the harsh conditions of our native northern Norway is now an advantage for us. Our high quality stainless steel equipment simply don’t break down, wherever it may be in the world. Much like the materials it’s designed to handle.

Should our machines sink, they’ll remain intact for years and years and thus become part of the problem. But we had to make them non-degradable … because it takes one to stow one.

For a long time, ours was a world of indifference regarding maritime waste disposal. “Whatever floats your boat” was quite literally the attitude most people had towards waste disposal at sea up until the last few decades. But as we came to the realisation that there was a limit to how much waste our oceans could handle, attitudes changed and the need for alternative solutions arose. Providing the worlds best solutions to this problem is the mission that floats our boat.

The Change

The global maritime industry has never faced more environmental challenges than today. The same industry is under constant pressure in order to comply with the increasingly strict set of rules and regulations with regards to the environment.
Owners, operators, charterers and other players in the maritime industry have, in addition, implemented s higher environmental demands with a common goal to become cleaner and greener.
During the latest years lots of things have happened with reference to marine waste management, but the most significant change is undoubtedly the revised IMO Marpol 73/78 Annex V.