MARPOL Annex V: garbage discharge rules

Background: Annex V scope and 1988 entry into force

MARPOL Annex V is the youngest of the three pollution-prevention annexes that entered into force in the 1980s, and it is the only annex with no tonnage or person threshold for application. The annex was adopted in 1973 alongside the body of MARPOL, was held in abeyance pending sufficient ratification, and entered into force on 31 December 1988. From that date, every ship of every flag, of every size, on every voyage, has been bound by the prohibition on discharge of plastics and by the broader Annex V regime.

The broad scope is deliberate. Garbage is generated on a small fishing vessel, on a yacht, on a coastal trader, and on a 24-deck cruise ship; the impact on the marine environment from a single discarded plastic bottle is the same regardless of the size of the ship that discards it. The drafters of the 1988 text rejected the tonnage thresholds used in Annex I (150 GT for oil tankers, 400 GT for other ships) and Annex IV (400 GT or 15 persons) and adopted instead a flat application clause that captures the entire world fleet. The only differentiation is in the documentation requirements under Regulation 10, where the Garbage Management Plan is required only for ships of 100 GT and above or carrying 15 or more persons, and the Garbage Record Book is required for ships of 400 GT and above or carrying 15 or more persons; even ships below those documentation thresholds remain bound by the discharge rules.

The 1988 text was revised in 2011 by Resolution MEPC.201(62), adopted at the 62nd session of the Marine Environment Protection Committee and entering into force on 1 January 2013. The 2011 revision introduced the modern category structure, tightened the discharge rules, and shifted the convention from a permission-based logic to a prohibition-based logic. Specifically, it reversed the burden: discharge of garbage into the sea is now prohibited by default under Regulation 3 unless a specific provision of the annex expressly permits it. That inversion was the headline change and remains the governing logic of the annex today.

The 2016 amendments under Resolution MEPC.277(70) added the HME cargo-residue criteria, splitting cargo residues into Category J (not HME) and Category K (HME), tying the HME determination to the UN GHS environmental hazard categories, and splitting the Garbage Record Book into Part I (general garbage, Categories A to I) and Part II (cargo-residue-related discharges, Categories J and K), recognising that the two operational regimes had diverged sufficiently to warrant separate logging. The companion 2017 Guidelines under Resolution MEPC.295(71) set out the implementing detail. Both sets of 2017 amendments entered into force on 1 March 2018.

The framework today is the broadest ship-source pollution-prevention regime in MARPOL, with eight Special Areas, eleven garbage categories (A through K, with H being fishing gear and I being e-waste, and the J/K split for non-HME and HME cargo residues introduced by MEPC.277(70)), three operational documents, and a network of port reception facilities supported by IMO Convention obligations on coastal states.

Definition of garbage (Reg 1)

Regulation 1 of MARPOL Annex V defines garbage as all kinds of victual, domestic, and operational waste, all plastics, cargo residues, incinerator ashes, cooking oil, fishing gear, and animal carcasses generated during the normal operation of the ship and liable to be disposed of continuously or periodically. The definition explicitly excludes fresh fish and parts thereof generated as a result of the ship’s normal fishing activities (a carve-out for fishing-vessel activity), excludes substances defined or listed in other MARPOL annexes (oil under Annex I, NLS cargoes under Annex II, sewage under Annex IV, air emissions under Annex VI), and excludes operational substances regulated as such under the convention.

The breadth of the definition reflects the operational reality of shipboard waste. Victual waste is food preparation and food-service waste from galleys, mess rooms, and accommodation. Domestic waste is waste generated in living spaces: paper, packaging, used personal-care products, cleaning rags, and similar. Operational waste is waste generated by ship operations: cargo-handling pallets and dunnage, deck-machinery cleaning rags, paint scrapings, abrasive-blasting media, expired stores, and equipment packaging. Plastics is a separate category because the prohibition on plastic discharge is absolute and antedates the broader regime by decades; in 1988 the only Annex V prohibition with global scope was the plastics ban. Cargo residues is the residual material left after cargo discharge that cannot be recovered through normal cargo-handling means: hold-cleaning sweepings, bilge sludge from cargo holds (distinct from machinery-space oily bilge water under Annex I), washwater from hold-cleaning operations on bulk carriers and general-cargo ships. Incinerator ashes is the residual ash from on-board incineration of garbage, which may contain heavy metals and other persistent contaminants. Cooking oil is used vegetable or animal frying oil from galley operations. Fishing gear is nets, traps, ropes, hooks, lines, and similar gear deployed for fishing or aquaculture and abandoned or accidentally lost.

The definition was expanded in the post-2011 implementation guidelines to include e-waste as a sub-category of operational waste, recognising the growing volume of electronic equipment (computers, monitors, mobile telephones, navigational electronics) replaced and discarded over a ship’s service life. E-waste discharge is prohibited globally, and shore disposal must be through certified electronic-waste recycling streams to avoid heavy-metal contamination of municipal landfills.

The definition’s exclusion of substances defined under other MARPOL annexes is the operational rule for choosing which annex governs a particular waste stream. Engine-room bilge water is Annex I oily-water discharge, not Annex V garbage; black water is Annex IV sewage, not Annex V garbage; cargo tank washings on a chemical tanker are Annex II NLS, not Annex V; the residue of a packaged-form harmful substance under Annex III is governed by the spillage rules of that annex. Where the same physical material could be argued to fall under more than one annex, the convention’s practice is that the more specific annex prevails; the specific is the general residual category for the rest.

Garbage categories: discharge conditions at a glance

The table below summarises the Regulation 4 outside-Special-Area and Regulation 6 Special Area discharge conditions for each category following the revisions consolidated through MEPC.277(70) and MEPC.295(71). “PRO” means globally prohibited (shore reception or approved incineration only). “SA” means Special Area regime under Regulation 6.

Notes: “Nearest land” includes offshore islands and ice shelves. All en-route conditions require the ship to be making way on a voyage; at-anchor or drifting vessels cannot legally discharge even where distance requirements are met. The Regulation 5 platform regime imports the 12-nm comminuted-food-waste rule for fixed and floating platforms located more than 12 nm offshore and for ships within 500 m of them.

Eleven garbage categories (Garbage Record Book codes A to K)

The Garbage Record Book entry form built on the 2011 text of MARPOL Annex V structures the regime around eleven garbage categories, A through K, with cargo residues split into non-HME (Category J) and HME (Category K) after the 2017 amendments under MEPC.277(70). The categories below correspond to the rows of the Annex V garbage-discharge table that the master uses to determine, for any given waste stream and any given ship position, whether discharge is permitted. Categories A to I make up Garbage Record Book Part I; Categories J and K, the cargo residues, make up Part II.

Category A, plastics. All plastics, including but not limited to synthetic ropes, synthetic fishing nets, plastic garbage bags, incinerator ashes from plastic products, and any plastic-containing item. Discharge into the sea is prohibited globally with no exception; Category A is the most categorical prohibition in MARPOL. The prohibition has been in force since 31 December 1988 and applies equally inside and outside Special Areas, on the high seas, in coastal waters, in port, and at any speed.

Category B, food wastes. Food wastes from galleys, mess rooms, and food-preparation areas. Discharge is permitted under conditions: outside Special Areas, after comminution to a particle size that passes through a screen with openings of not more than 25 mm, at a distance of not less than 3 nautical miles from the nearest land, with the ship en-route and proceeding at not less than 4 knots; without comminution, the same regime applies but the distance is extended to 12 nautical miles. Inside Special Areas, the rules are tightened (see the Regulation 6 section below).

Category C, domestic wastes. Paper, rags, glass, metal, bottles, crockery, and similar materials from accommodation and service spaces, excluding plastics (which are Category A) and food wastes (Category B). Discharge into the sea is prohibited globally; the only legal disposal route is to a port reception facility or to an approved on-board incinerator.

Category D, cooking oil. Used cooking oil from galley fryers and oil-based food preparation. Discharge into the sea is prohibited globally; the only legal disposal route is to a reception facility or, where the ship is equipped, to an approved on-board incinerator. Cooking oil was added as a separate category in the 2011 revision; before that it was treated as part of operational waste with looser rules.

Category E, incinerator ashes. Residual ash and clinker from on-board incineration of garbage. Discharge of ash and clinker derived from products containing heavy metals or other toxic residues is prohibited; only ash from incineration of items consisting wholly of ordinary materials may be discharged, and only outside Special Areas at a distance of more than 12 nautical miles from the nearest land. In practice, modern shipboard incinerators handle a mixed garbage stream and almost all ash falls under the prohibition; the operational default is to retain ash for shore disposal.

Category F, operational wastes. Cleaning rags, deck-machinery wipes, deck-cleaning solid material, abrasive-blasting media, paint scrapings, ship-store packaging that is not plastic and not food-related, and similar materials. Discharge into the sea is prohibited globally, with the same shore-reception or incineration-only disposal logic as Category C and Category D.

Category G, animal carcasses. Carcasses of livestock or domestic animals that died on board. Discharge is permitted only outside Special Areas, only as far from the nearest land as possible, and only with the ship en-route and proceeding at not less than 4 knots. The “as far from the nearest land as possible” language is interpreted in IMO Guidelines as implying at least 100 nautical miles from the nearest land where practicable, recognising that the alternative (retaining a decomposing carcass on a ship without freezer capacity) carries its own operational and biosecurity risks. The category is operationally relevant primarily on livestock carriers.

Category H, fishing gear. Nets, traps, ropes, hooks, lines, floats, and similar gear deployed for fishing or aquaculture and discarded or abandoned. Discharge into the sea is prohibited globally; the only exception is the accidental loss covered by the Regulation 7 exceptions, provided all reasonable precautions were taken to prevent the loss. Abandoned, lost, or otherwise discarded fishing gear (ALDFG) is a recognised source of ghost-fishing and marine debris, which is why fishing gear carries its own Garbage Record Book code.

Category I, e-waste. Electronic equipment including computers, monitors, mobile telephones, and navigational electronics that are discarded during ship operations. Discharge into the sea is prohibited globally; shore disposal through certified e-waste streams is the only legal route. This category was formalised in the post-2011 IMO implementation guidelines, and its practical significance has grown with the increasing volume of electronic equipment on board modern vessels.

Category J, cargo residues not classified as HME. Cargo residues from solid bulk cargoes that do not meet the HME criteria. Discharge is permitted at a distance of not less than 12 nautical miles from the nearest land, with the ship en-route at not less than 4 knots, and only after the cargo hold has been emptied of recoverable cargo by ordinary means. Inside Special Areas the latitude is broader than for Category K: the Wider Caribbean Region permits Category J discharge under the narrow both-ports-inside conditions where Category K discharge is prohibited outright.

Category K, cargo residues classified as HME. Cargo residues from solid bulk cargoes that meet the Harmful to the Marine Environment criteria of MEPC.277(70). Discharge is permitted only outside Special Areas, only at a distance of not less than 12 nautical miles from the nearest land, only with the ship en-route and proceeding at not less than 4 knots, and only after the cargo hold has been emptied of recoverable cargo by ordinary discharge means. HME residue may never be discharged inside any Special Area.

The eleven-category structure (A through K, with H for fishing gear and I for e-waste, in the IMO numbering convention for the GRB entry form) is the reference table that every master uses, with the cargo-residue split into J and K adding the chemistry-aware refinement that differentiates a benign grain residue from a residue carrying environmentally harmful chemistry.

Reg 3: general prohibition + permitted exceptions

Regulation 3 of MARPOL Annex V sets the general rule: discharge of garbage into the sea is prohibited, except as expressly provided otherwise in the annex. The provision was the headline change in the 2011 revision introduced by MEPC.201(62); the pre-2011 text framed the rules permissively, listing what was allowed and leaving the residual as implicitly permitted. The post-2011 text inverts the logic: garbage discharge is prohibited as the default, and any specific permission must be identified by reference to a specific provision of the annex.

The inversion has practical consequences. A master who is asked by a port state inspector or by flag-state surveyors to justify a discharge entry in the Garbage Record Book must point to a specific Annex V Regulation that authorised the discharge: Regulation 4.1.1 for comminuted food waste at 3 nm outside a Special Area, Regulation 4.1.2 for non-comminuted food waste and non-HME cargo residue at 12 nm, Regulation 6 for the special-area equivalents, Regulation 5 for offshore-platform discharges where applicable. The residual of “I thought it was probably allowed” is no longer a defence under the 2011 framework.

The exceptions to the general prohibition are limited. Regulation 7 sets out safety-of-the-ship and safety-of-life exceptions: discharge of garbage from a ship that is necessary for the purpose of securing the safety of the ship and those on board, discharge of garbage that has resulted from accidental damage to the ship or its equipment provided that all reasonable precautions have been taken before and after the occurrence to prevent or minimise the discharge, and accidental loss of fishing gear from a ship provided that all reasonable precautions have been taken to prevent the loss. The accidental-damage exception is a defence-in-fact and requires evidentiary support: a master invoking it must be able to point to deck-log entries of the casualty, photographs where practicable, an entry in the GRB describing the event, and a report to the flag state Administration through the master’s formal incident-reporting channel.

The Regulation 7 exceptions are narrow. They do not authorise routine operational discharge that the master finds inconvenient, do not authorise discharge of garbage that has been accumulating in a hold and become difficult to handle, do not authorise discharge by a ship that has chosen to bypass a port reception facility for cost reasons, and do not authorise discharge of plastics under any circumstance. The casualty-defence threshold is high.

The structure of the general prohibition has been strengthened by the 2018 introduction of the Garbage Record Book Part II, which brings cargo-residue handling into the same documentary discipline as ordinary garbage. A discharge of cargo residue that is not recorded in Part II is presumed to be unauthorised, and the master’s defence that the discharge was permitted under Regulation 4 fails on the absence of the contemporaneous record.

Reg 4: discharge outside Special Areas (distance + comminution requirements)

Regulation 4 is the outside-Special-Area regime and the rule that the master applies on most voyages. It permits discharge of specific garbage categories under specific conditions, with three core variables: distance from nearest land, comminution state, and the en-route + 4 knots condition.

For food waste comminuted to ≤ 25 mm (Category B, comminuted), discharge is permitted at a distance of not less than 3 nautical miles from the nearest land, with the ship en-route and proceeding at not less than 4 knots. The 3-nm figure is the historical territorial-sea limit of many coastal states and recognises the rapid biological breakdown of finely comminuted organic matter under aerobic open-ocean conditions.

For food waste not comminuted (Category B, non-comminuted), discharge is permitted at a distance of not less than 12 nautical miles from the nearest land, with the same en-route and speed conditions. The 12-nm distance is the modern UNCLOS territorial-sea limit and reflects the slower breakdown of larger food-waste particles. Non-comminuted food waste is the operational category for ships without a galley macerator; modern installations almost always include a macerator and operate primarily under the 3-nm pathway.

For cargo residues that are not HME (Category J), discharge is permitted at a distance of not less than 12 nautical miles from the nearest land, with the en-route and 4-knot conditions. The discharge must occur after the cargo hold has been emptied by ordinary cargo-handling means; “cargo residue” is defined as the material that cannot be recovered through normal cargo-handling means and excludes recoverable cargo that the master might prefer to discharge to sea for convenience.

For cargo residues that are HME (Category K), discharge is permitted at a distance of not less than 12 nautical miles from the nearest land, with the en-route and 4-knot conditions, and only outside Special Areas. The HME criterion is the gating chemistry test, evaluated at the loading port through the IMSBC Code declaration and the cargo’s GHS classification.

For animal carcasses (Category G), discharge is permitted as far from the nearest land as possible, with the en-route and 4-knot conditions. The interpretive guideline is at least 100 nautical miles where practicable; the language is deliberately less prescriptive than the food-waste pathways because livestock-carrier operations are infrequent and the alternatives to sea-disposal of a carcass are limited.

For all other categories (Category A plastics, Category C domestic wastes, Category D cooking oil, Category E incinerator ashes except heavy-metal-free ash outside SA at ≥ 12 nm, Category F operational wastes, Category H fishing gear, Category I e-waste), discharge into the sea is prohibited globally under Regulation 4. The only permissible disposal routes are to a port reception facility or, for combustible categories, to an approved on-board incinerator with the residual ash either retained for shore disposal (the operational default) or discharged under the very narrow Category E pathway.

The en-route condition deserves emphasis. A ship at anchor or drifting with engines off cannot discharge garbage to sea under Regulation 4, regardless of distance from land. The en-route condition is the dispersion-by-motion principle that also governs Annex I oil discharge and Annex IV sewage discharge: a ship moving over the water distributes the discharge along a track of kilometres, allowing dilution and natural breakdown to begin before any subsequent ship traverses the same water. A point release at anchor produces a localised plume that violates the dispersion logic.

Reg 5: platforms-specific rules (offshore installations)

Regulation 5 of MARPOL Annex V, titled “Special requirements for discharge of garbage from fixed or floating platforms,” applies to fixed and floating platforms engaged in the exploration, exploitation, and associated offshore processing of seabed mineral resources, and to all other ships when alongside or within 500 metres of such platforms. The platform regime is stricter than the ship regime under Regulations 4 and 6: discharge of any garbage into the sea is prohibited, except for food wastes that have been comminuted to a particle size of not more than 25 mm and are discharged from platforms located more than 12 nautical miles from the nearest land.

The 12-nm figure is the same as the inside-Special-Area pathway for food waste; the platform regime imports the Special Area logic without requiring the platform to be located inside a designated Special Area. The rationale is that platform locations, even on the high seas of the open ocean, are typically in locations selected for their proximity to seabed resources, which often means continental-shelf locations within range of coastal ecosystems and commercial fisheries. The 12-nm rule is the precautionary default.

The 500-metre rule for ships in the vicinity of a platform extends the platform-strict regime to support vessels (anchor-handlers, crew boats, supply vessels, well-test vessels) that operate close to the platform. A supply vessel operating routinely within the 500-m zone is, for Annex V purposes, treated as part of the platform complex and may not discharge garbage to sea except under the platform pathway. Once outside the 500-m zone, the supply vessel is subject to the ordinary ship rules under Regulations 4 and 6.

The platform regime has practical consequences for offshore-industry operations. Crew accommodation on a large production platform may host 200 or more personnel for extended rotations, generating substantial quantities of food waste, domestic waste, and operational waste. The Regulation 5 prohibition on most discharges, combined with the impracticality of moving the platform to a distance of 12 nm from the nearest land for discharge, means that virtually all platform garbage (other than comminuted food waste discharged through a galley macerator and dispersed at the platform location, where the location itself is more than 12 nm from land) must be retained on board for transfer to supply vessels and onward shipment to shore reception facilities. The supply-vessel transfer logistics are a non-trivial component of platform operating cost.

For mobile offshore drilling units (MODUs), the platform regime applies during drilling operations on station and during well-testing operations. During transit between drilling locations, the MODU is treated as a ship and Regulations 4 and 6 apply. The transition between operating modes is documented in the platform’s GMP and in entries in the GRB.

Reg 6: discharge in Special Areas

Regulation 6 is the Special Area regime. It applies in the eight designated Special Areas (Mediterranean, Baltic, Black Sea, Red Sea, Gulfs Area, North Sea, Antarctic, and the Wider Caribbean Region) and tightens the outside-Special-Area regime of Regulation 4 to a stricter standard reflecting the particular vulnerability of the designated waters.

Inside a Special Area, the discharge of any garbage into the sea is prohibited except for food wastes. Food wastes may be discharged only after comminution to a particle size that passes through a screen with openings of not more than 25 mm, only at a distance of not less than 12 nautical miles from the nearest land or ice shelf, with the ship en-route and proceeding at not less than 4 knots. The 12-nm distance is the same for comminuted and non-comminuted food waste in Special Areas; non-comminuted food waste is in practice prohibited because the comminution-to-25-mm requirement is paired with the food-waste permission. The 4-knot speed and en-route conditions match the outside-Special-Area regime.

The Special Area regime also addresses cargo residues. Cargo residues that cannot be recovered using commonly available methods for unloading may be discharged in Special Areas only if the residue is classified as not HME (Category J), only if both the port of departure and the next port of destination are within the Special Area, and only if no adequate reception facility is available at either port for the residue. The triple condition is restrictive and operationally limits Category J discharge in Special Areas to specific intra-Special-Area trades where reception facility provisioning has been documented as inadequate.

Cargo residues classified as HME (Category K) may not be discharged inside a Special Area, full stop. The HME prohibition inside Special Areas was the central operational tightening of the 2017 MEPC.277(70) amendments; it forces operators of bulk carriers carrying HME cargoes through Special Areas to retain residues on board for discharge to a reception facility at a port outside the Special Area or, more commonly, to dispose of the residue at the loading or discharge port through the local reception facility before leaving the area.

The Antarctic Special Area carries an additional tightening: discharge of any garbage, including food wastes, into the sea is prohibited except for comminuted food waste discharged at a distance of not less than 12 nautical miles from the nearest land or ice shelf. The Antarctic regime is reinforced by the Polar Code, which adds further restrictions on cargo residues and requires retention on board for discharge outside the Antarctic Treaty area in many cases.

Eight Annex V Special Areas + entry-into-force schedule

MARPOL Annex V designates eight Special Areas, more than any other annex. The areas, in chronological order of designation:

Mediterranean Sea Special Area. Designated in the original 1973 text; the discharge restrictions took operational effect on 1 May 2009 following declaration of adequate reception facility provisioning by the riparian states. The area covers the entire Mediterranean basin, bounded by the Strait of Gibraltar to the west and the entrance to the Dardanelles to the east. Reception facility coverage is now broadly considered adequate, although operational quality varies between Western European ports (highly developed, well-priced) and some Eastern Mediterranean and North African ports (variable).

Baltic Sea Special Area. Designated in the 1973 text; entered into force on 1 October 1989. The area covers the Baltic proper, the Gulfs of Bothnia, Finland, and Riga, and the Kattegat. Reception facility coverage is excellent under the HELCOM Convention 1992 and the no-special-fee regime that applies in HELCOM ports for ship-source waste. The Baltic is the operational benchmark for Annex V Special Area implementation.

Black Sea Special Area. Designated in the 1973 text; the discharge restrictions have not yet entered into force because the riparian states have not certified adequate reception facility provisioning to the IMO Secretary-General. The area covers the Black Sea proper. A ship in the Black Sea is bound, in formal legal terms, by the Regulation 4 outside-Special-Area regime, not Regulation 6, even though many flag-state policies and operators apply the Special Area regime voluntarily.

Red Sea Special Area. Designated in the 1973 text. The discharge restrictions took operational effect on 1 January 2025 under Resolution MEPC.382(80), adopted at MEPC 80 in July 2023, after more than four decades during which the area was designated but not in effect for the reception-facility reason. From 1 January 2025 a ship in the Red Sea applies the Regulation 6 Special Area regime, not the Regulation 4 outside-area regime. Reception provisioning along the Red Sea coasts is still developing, so this is the newly active area to watch.

Gulfs Area Special Area. Designated in the 1973 text; the discharge restrictions took operational effect on 1 August 2008. The area covers the sea north-west of the rhumb line between Ras al Hadd and Ras al Fasteh, taking in the Persian/Arabian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. The effective date is later than the early designation because riparian reception-facility provisioning lagged the regional shipping volume for decades.

North Sea Special Area. Designated in 1989; entered into force on 18 February 1991. Covers the North Sea proper and the English Channel. Reception facility coverage is excellent and operational quality is high. The area sits within the North Sea SECA / NECA regime that also governs air emissions.

Antarctic Special Area. Designated in 1990; entered into force on 17 March 1992. Covers the sea area south of latitude 60°S. The Antarctic regime is the strictest Annex V regime, with all garbage discharge prohibited except comminuted food waste at ≥ 12 nm. The regime is reinforced by the Polar Code provisions on garbage retention and discharge that apply additionally to ships engaged in polar operations.

Wider Caribbean Region (WCR) Special Area. Designated in 1991; entered into force on 1 May 2011 following long-delayed reception facility provisioning by the regional states. The WCR covers the Caribbean Sea proper, the Gulf of Mexico, and the surrounding coastal waters of the riparian states. The WCR discharge regime is in effect, although operational reception facility quality continues to vary across the region.

The entry-into-force pattern reflects the Annex V design principle that Special Area discharge restrictions take operational effect only after the riparian states have certified adequate reception facility provisioning to the IMO Secretary-General. The principle was designed to avoid a situation where ships are forbidden to discharge to sea in an area but cannot find a reception facility to take the waste; in practice, the principle has produced multi-decade delays, the Gulfs Area waiting until 1 August 2008 and the Red Sea until 1 January 2025, while the Black Sea restrictions have still not been triggered because reception facility investment has lagged the regional shipping volume.

Garbage Management Plan (GMP) under Reg 10

Regulation 10 of MARPOL Annex V requires every ship of 100 GT and above and every ship certified to carry 15 or more persons, and every fixed and floating platform, to carry a written Garbage Management Plan (GMP), sometimes abbreviated GarMP. The GMP is a ship-specific document that describes the operational procedures for collecting, storing, processing, and disposing of garbage on board. It is approved by the flag state Administration or by a Recognised Organisation acting on its behalf and is required to be carried on board with the ship’s other statutory documents.

The GMP’s content is prescribed by IMO Guidelines (most recently the 2017 Guidelines under MEPC.295(71)). The plan must include: identification of the ship and the company; designation of the person in charge of carrying out the plan (typically the chief mate, with the master retaining overall responsibility); descriptions of the collection procedures for each garbage category, including the location and labelling of segregation containers; descriptions of the storage procedures, including segregated storage for plastics, food waste, cargo residues, and incinerator ashes; descriptions of the processing procedures, including any on-board comminution, compaction, or incineration; descriptions of the disposal procedures, identifying which categories are discharged to sea under which Annex V provision and which are retained for shore reception; and any ship-specific equipment details (incinerator type and capacity, comminutor location and screen size, holding-tank volumes, garbage hold or store dimensions).

The GMP is more than a paper document. It is the procedural instrument through which the deck and engine departments carry out the daily routines of garbage segregation, compaction, incineration, and overboard discharge. A well-written GMP states, for each category, the segregation container, the storage location, the responsible department, the disposal pathway, the entry to make in the GRB, and the procedure for handling exceptions (such as a port reception facility refusing to accept a category, or an incinerator failure during a long ocean transit).

The GMP must be in the working language of the crew. Where the working language is not English, French, or Spanish, the GMP must additionally be available in one of those three languages for port state and reception-facility purposes. The working-language requirement reflects the operational reality that a chief mate giving instructions to the deck crew must give them in the language the crew understands; a plan in the master’s language alone fails the operational test.

The GMP is reviewed at each Annex V flag-state survey (the Initial Survey, Annual Surveys, and Renewal Survey associated with the broader survey cycle) and is examined during PSC inspections. Material discrepancies between the GMP and the actual on-board practice (for example, a plan describing an incinerator that has been removed, or a plan referencing a holding tank that has been re-purposed) are detained-grade findings under most PSC regimes.

Garbage Record Book (GRB): entry requirements

The Garbage Record Book (GRB) is the operational log that records every garbage discharge, every garbage transfer to a reception facility, every on-board incineration event, and every accidental loss. It is required for every ship of 400 GT and above and every ship certified to carry 15 or more persons, and is kept in addition to the GMP.

Since Resolution MEPC.277(70) (adopted at MEPC 70 in October 2016, in force from 1 March 2018), the GRB is split into Part I for general garbage (Categories A through I) and Part II for cargo-residue-related discharges (Categories J and K). The split recognises that the two operational regimes have diverged sufficiently to warrant separate logging: ordinary garbage entries are made by the deck or engine officer of the watch on a routine basis, while cargo-residue entries follow a different operational chain involving the chief mate, the cargo plan, and the loading-port documentation.

GRB Part I, entry requirements. Each entry records:

• Date and time of the operation in UTC.
• Position of the ship at the start of the operation, expressed in latitude and longitude to a precision of at least one minute of arc.
• Category of garbage by reference to Categories A through I (A plastics, B food waste, C domestic waste, D cooking oil, E incinerator ashes, F operational waste, G animal carcasses, H fishing gear, I e-waste).
• Estimated volume disposed in cubic metres, with the disposal route (discharge to sea, discharge to reception facility, on-board incineration).
• Estimated mass for incineration entries.
• Signature of the officer in charge of the operation.

The master countersigns each completed page of the GRB. Entries are made in English, French, or Spanish, and additionally in the working language of the crew where that language is not one of the three official languages.

GRB Part II, entry requirements. Each entry records:

• Date and time of the cargo-residue handling operation.
• Position at the start of the operation.
• Cargo type and the HME or non-HME determination with reference to the IMSBC Code declaration.
• Estimated volume of residue and the disposal route (discharge to sea outside Special Area at ≥ 12 nm, discharge to reception facility, retention on board for next port).
• Hold or holds from which the residue was generated.
• Signature of the chief mate.

The Part II entries align with the IMSBC Code documentation and the cargo plan, providing an audit trail that links the loaded cargo, the discharge port, and the residue disposal.

The GRB is retained on board for at least two years after the date of the last entry. Where the ship changes flag, the GRB accompanies the ship to the new flag and continues in use; the original flag state retains a copy or summary record. The GRB is presented to the master’s control during PSC inspections; absent or incomplete entries are detained-grade findings under most PSC regimes, and falsified entries are criminal offences under most flag-state legislation implementing MARPOL.

Placard requirements + multilingual

Regulation 10.1 of MARPOL Annex V requires every ship of 12 metres or more in overall length, and every fixed and floating platform, to display placards that notify the crew and passengers of the discharge requirements of the annex. The placard requirement is independent of the GMP and GRB requirements; it captures even small ships below the GMP threshold, on the principle that a 12-metre vessel still has crew who must understand the rules.

The placard text is prescribed by IMO Guidelines and lists, in summary form, the discharge prohibitions and permissions for each garbage category, the distance and en-route requirements where applicable, and the prohibition on plastic discharge. The format is a tabular wall-mounted notice typically posted in the galley, mess, accommodation passageways, and on the bridge.

The placards must be in English, French, or Spanish, with additional placards required in the working language of the crew if different from one of the three official languages. The multilingual requirement recognises the polyglot reality of modern crewing: a ship under a Panama flag with a Filipino, Ukrainian, and Indian crew operating under English as the working language requires the English placard; a ship with a predominantly Indonesian crew under Indonesian as the working language requires both the Indonesian working-language placard and one of English, French, or Spanish for port-state and reception-facility purposes.

Placards are inspected during PSC examinations as part of the Annex V documentary review. Missing placards, placards in the wrong language, illegible or obsolete placards (referencing pre-2011 categories, for example), and placards with damaged or missing sections are findings under PSC and may be deficiency-graded depending on the severity. Class society implementation guidance from DNV, Lloyd’s Register, ABS, BV, NK, RINA, KR, CCS, RS, and IRS provides standard placard templates that ships can use to ensure alignment with the current Guidelines.

HME (Harmful to Marine Environment) cargo residue classification

The Harmful to the Marine Environment (HME) classification is the chemistry-aware refinement that the 2017 amendments under Resolution MEPC.277(70) added to the cargo-residue regime. Before 2018, cargo residues were a single category with a single set of discharge rules; from 2018, residues are split into Category J (not HME) and Category K (HME), with stricter restrictions for Category K.

The HME determination is made by reference to the UN Globally Harmonised System (GHS) environmental hazard categories. A bulk cargo is HME if it meets any of the following criteria:

• Acute aquatic toxicity Category 1.
• Chronic aquatic toxicity Category 1 or 2.
• Carcinogenicity Category 1A or 1B under GHS, where the cargo is in a form that does not chemically alter on dissolution.
• Mutagenicity Category 1A or 1B.
• Reproductive toxicity Category 1A or 1B.
• Specific target organ toxicity (repeated exposure) Category 1.
• Persistent and bioaccumulative under specific synthetic-chemical criteria.
• Solid bulk material containing or consisting of synthetic polymers, rubber, plastics, or plastic feedstock pellets (regardless of acute toxicity, on the precautionary plastics-pollution principle).

The HME determination is made at the loading port by the shipper, with the determination communicated to the master through the IMSBC Code declaration that the shipper is required to provide before loading. The IMSBC declaration includes the bulk cargo shipping name (BCSN), the hazard classification, and the HME or not-HME determination. The master is entitled to rely on the shipper’s declaration unless there is evident error or fraud; the burden of accurate HME determination rests on the shipper, with the master’s entry in the GRB Part II referencing the declaration.

The HME determination drives the discharge regime: HME residues (Category K) cannot be discharged inside any Special Area and require ≥ 12 nm + en-route + 4 knots outside Special Areas; non-HME residues (Category J) follow the standard ≥ 12 nm regime outside Special Areas with limited Special Area allowances. The chemistry-aware split has had operational consequences for the global bulk-carrier trade: cargoes that were previously discharged to sea as residue (some fertilisers, some metal concentrates, some agricultural products with biocide treatment) are now retained on board for shore reception, increasing reception facility demand at major dry-bulk ports.

2017 amendments: MEPC.277(70) HME criteria and MEPC.295(71) GRB split

Resolution MEPC.277(70), adopted on 28 October 2016 at MEPC 70 and entering into force on 1 March 2018, was the central reform of the post-2011 Annex V framework. The resolution introduced the HME criteria for cargo residues, the corresponding Category J and Category K split, and the consequential changes to the discharge tables in Regulation 4 and the Special Area regime in Regulation 6. The companion resolution, MEPC.295(71), adopted at MEPC 71 in July 2017 and also entering into force on 1 March 2018, updated the Guidelines for the Implementation of MARPOL Annex V, establishing the two-part GRB structure that Part I / Part II logging reflects.

The drafting of MEPC.277(70) was driven by accumulated evidence of harm from cargo residues that had previously been treated as benign. Iron-ore residues with elevated trace-metal content, fertiliser residues with phosphate or biocide loading, and especially plastic feedstock pellets (nurdles) discharged as bulk-cargo residue were identified by environmental monitoring programmes as significant contributors to marine pollution despite their pre-2017 status as discharge-permitted. The X-Press Pearl casualty (which post-dated the resolution but reinforced its rationale) illustrated the catastrophic impact of nurdle release at scale: approximately 1,680 tonnes of plastic pellets released off Sri Lanka in May 2021 from a container-cargo fire.

The resolution’s reference to the GHS categories embedded the chemistry framework that the chemical industry already used into the maritime regulatory regime. A cargo’s safety data sheet (SDS) prepared for terrestrial transport under GHS contains the same hazard categorisation that drives the HME determination; the resolution draws on existing chemistry assessment work rather than requiring a separate maritime-specific assessment.

The implementation timeline was staged. The HME criteria entered into force on 1 March 2018; ships were granted a transitional period during which prior cargo residue handling under the pre-2017 rules remained acceptable for cargoes loaded before the entry-into-force date. Flag-state administrations issued circulars during 2017 and early 2018 instructing fleets on the transition, and class societies (DNV, LR, ABS, BV, NK, RINA, KR, CCS, RS, IRS) updated their MARPOL implementation guidance to reflect the new categories and discharge rules.

The 2017 amendments are the most operationally significant Annex V reform since the 2011 revision and continue to shape the bulk-carrier trade today.

Cruise-ship waste handling: ~3.5 kg/person/day

The cruise-ship sector generates the largest per-passenger garbage volume of any category of commercial shipping. Waste-audit studies on major cruise lines and port reception facility records at high-volume cruise ports indicate an average garbage generation rate of approximately 3.5 kilograms per person per day for combined passenger and crew complements.

The breakdown of the 3.5 kg/person/day figure is approximately:

• Food waste: 1.0 to 1.5 kg per person per day, the largest single component, reflecting the buffet-and-restaurant catering volumes characteristic of the cruise sector.
• Domestic waste (paper, cardboard, glass, metal, packaging): 1.0 to 1.5 kg per person per day, driven by passenger consumption of bottled beverages, single-use packaging, and printed materials.
• Plastics: 0.3 to 0.5 kg per person per day, including all plastic packaging that must be retained for shore disposal under the Category A prohibition.
• Other (operational waste, cleaning waste, fishing gear if any, animal carcasses if any): 0.2 to 0.5 kg per person per day.

For a 4,000-passenger-plus-1,500-crew cruise ship operating a 7-day Caribbean itinerary, the total garbage volume is approximately 5,500 persons × 3.5 kg/day × 7 days = 134,750 kg, roughly 135 tonnes per voyage. The volumetric figure depends on compaction; uncompacted, the volume is on the order of 800 to 1,000 cubic metres; after compaction and incineration of combustible fractions, the residual volume requiring shore reception is on the order of 100 to 200 cubic metres.

Cruise lines manage the volume through a combination of:

• On-board incineration of food waste, cardboard, paper, and non-recyclable combustibles, converting these to a much smaller ash volume (typically 5 to 10 percent of the input mass) that is retained for shore disposal (Category E prohibition on most ash discharge).
• On-board comminution of food waste through galley macerators, allowing discharge of comminuted food waste at sea outside Special Areas at ≥ 3 nm + en-route + 4 knots under Category B.
• Segregation of plastics, glass, and metals into dedicated streams for shore reception at the next port.
• Compaction of the retained streams to minimise on-board storage volume.
• Shore reception at port-call ports, with reception facility usage being a major scheduled component of every port call.

The per-port reception facility cost for a major cruise ship is in the range of USD 5,000 to USD 25,000 per call depending on volume and category mix, and the scheduling of reception offloading is a non-trivial operational constraint that interacts with passenger embarkation, fuelling, and provisioning.

Cargo-residue handling: bulk carrier grain/ore/fertiliser

The bulk-carrier trade generates cargo residues whose handling is governed by the Category J/K regime under Regulation 4 and Regulation 6. The volumes are smaller than cruise-ship garbage on a per-ship basis but are concentrated at the loading and discharge ports and have specific reception facility implications.

Grain residues. Wheat, maize, soya bean, barley, and other grain cargoes discharge with residues in the range of 0.05 to 0.2 percent of the loaded mass. For a 60,000-tonne grain Panamax, the residue is on the order of 30 to 120 tonnes, comprising broken grain, husk material, and dust. Grain residues are typically classified as non-HME (Category J); discharge to sea is permitted outside Special Areas at ≥ 12 nm + en-route + 4 knots after the cargo hold has been emptied by ordinary means. In practice, the residue is often handled by hold-washing operations at sea after the discharge port, with the washwater discharged under the Category J pathway.

Iron ore and other metallic ore residues. Bauxite, manganese ore, copper concentrate, and other metallic-ore residues range from 0.1 to 0.5 percent of the loaded mass. The HME determination depends on the trace-metal loading; high-purity iron ore is typically non-HME, while certain copper, lead, zinc, and nickel concentrates meet the HME criteria through chronic aquatic toxicity. HME concentrate residues require shore reception or retention on board for discharge outside Special Areas at ≥ 12 nm.

Fertiliser residues. Diammonium phosphate, urea, potassium chloride, ammonium nitrate-based fertilisers, and similar cargoes carry residues in the range of 0.1 to 0.5 percent. The HME determination depends on the specific formulation; some fertilisers are non-HME (urea, certain potash blends), while others meet HME criteria through chronic aquatic toxicity (ammonium nitrate at sufficient concentration, certain phosphate blends with biocide treatment). The fertiliser-residue regime has tightened since 2018 and shore reception is now the operational default for many fertiliser cargoes.

Soya bean and oilseed residues. Soya bean meal, soya bean cake, palm kernel expeller, and other oilseed residues are typically non-HME but carry secondary risks of self-heating and cargo-residue oxidation that require careful hold-washing protocols. The discharge regime is Category J outside Special Areas at ≥ 12 nm.

Coal residues. Steam coal and coking coal residues are typically non-HME but may include trace contaminants that elevate the HME determination depending on the source. The volumes are large (0.2 to 0.5 percent of cargoes that are themselves often 100,000+ tonnes), and reception facility provisioning at major coal terminals is well-developed.

The cargo-residue regime under Regulation 4 (outside Special Areas) and Regulation 6 (Special Areas) interlocks with the IMSBC Code declarations made by the shipper at loading. The Cargo Hold Cleaning Plan specifies, for each loaded cargo, the residue category, the HME determination, the planned discharge route, and the GRB Part II entries that the chief mate will make. The plan is reviewed and approved before loading and the on-board operations follow the plan.

Reception facility costs at major ports

The reception facility regime under Regulation 8 of MARPOL Annex V requires governments of parties to MARPOL to ensure the provision of adequate facilities at ports and terminals for the reception of garbage from ships. The facility provisioning is the prerequisite for the entry-into-force of Special Area discharge restrictions; the Gulfs Area delay to 2008, the Red Sea delay to 2025, and the still-pending Black Sea are the operational evidence of the prerequisite.

Reception facility costs vary widely by port, by category, and by service provider. Indicative ranges:

• HELCOM ports (Baltic Sea region) operate a no-special-fee regime under regional agreement. Garbage reception is included in the standard port dues with no per-cubic-metre charge; the regime is the operational benchmark for incentivising shore reception over sea-disposal. Coverage extends to mixed garbage, segregated plastics, food waste, and cargo residues.
• Northern European ports outside HELCOM (Hamburg, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Le Havre) charge per-cubic-metre fees in the range of EUR 50 to EUR 150 per m³ for general garbage, with surcharges for cargo residues and incinerator ashes.
• Mediterranean ports charge in the range of EUR 80 to EUR 250 per m³, with significant variation between EU and non-EU ports.
• Wider Caribbean Region ports charge USD 100 to USD 400 per m³, with high variability between cruise-dedicated terminals (with negotiated bulk-rate contracts) and general-cargo ports.
• Asian dry-bulk ports (Tianjin, Newcastle, Port Hedland, Qingdao) charge in the range of USD 50 to USD 200 per m³ for cargo residues, with sometimes-limited capacity that can require advance booking.
• Cruise-dedicated terminals typically operate negotiated annual contracts that bundle reception, fuel, water, and provisioning services into a single package; the per-call cost is in the range of USD 5,000 to USD 25,000 as noted in the cruise-ship section above.

The economic logic of the discharge regime depends on the cost differential between sea-disposal (where permitted) and shore reception. For categories where sea-disposal is permitted (food waste, non-HME cargo residues, animal carcasses), the choice between shore reception and sea-disposal is partly economic and partly reputational; major cruise lines and tonnage operators have moved toward shore reception even where sea-disposal would be lawful, reflecting customer expectations and corporate sustainability commitments. For categories where sea-disposal is prohibited (plastics, domestic waste, cooking oil, e-waste, HME cargo residues inside Special Areas), shore reception is the only option and the cost is a non-discretionary component of the voyage cost.

Class society implementation: DNV, LR, ABS, BV, NK, RINA, KR, CCS, RS, IRS

The major IACS classification societies maintain MARPOL Annex V implementation guidance and provide approval services for Garbage Management Plans, GRB templates, placard formats, and on-board equipment such as comminutors, compactors, and incinerators.

DNV (Norway) issues GMP approval certificates and incinerator type approvals under DNV-CG-0287 and related Class Guidelines. DNV’s implementation reference document covers the full Annex V regime with detailed examples for tanker, bulk-carrier, container, and passenger-ship categories.

Lloyd’s Register (LR) (United Kingdom) provides equivalent services with implementation guidance through LR Class Notes and the LR Statutory Information Service. LR’s passenger-ship-specific guidance addresses the high-volume handling characteristic of cruise tonnage.

ABS (United States) issues GMP approvals under the ABS MARPOL Compliance programme and provides USCG-recognition support for ships flagged under the United States or trading regularly in US waters. ABS’s incinerator type approval programme is one of the largest globally.

Bureau Veritas (BV) (France) provides GMP approval and Annex V survey services through BV Marine and BV Statutory. BV’s passenger-ship implementation has supported the major cruise-line accounts.

ClassNK (NK) (Japan) provides GMP services with particular strength in the Japanese-flag and Japan-trading bulk-carrier and tanker fleets. NK’s implementation guidance is closely coordinated with the Japanese flag state.

RINA (Italy) provides Mediterranean-focused implementation guidance, with operational depth on the Mediterranean Special Area regime and the Italian-flag passenger-ship sector.

Korean Register (KR) (South Korea) supports the Korean-flag and Korean-trading fleets with GMP and incinerator type approval services and Annex V survey delivery.

CCS (China Classification Society) provides implementation services for the Chinese-flag fleet (the world’s largest by tonnage) and for foreign-flag tonnage trading regularly in Chinese ports. CCS’s implementation reflects the Chinese reception facility provisioning context.

Russian Maritime Register of Shipping (RS) provides services for the Russian-flag fleet with regional depth on Black Sea and Arctic operations.

Indian Register of Shipping (IRS) provides Indian-flag and Indian-Ocean-trading fleet support with implementation guidance keyed to the Indian reception facility context.

The IACS-level coordination through the IACS MARPOL working group ensures that the implementation guidance of the major societies is broadly aligned, with the residual variation reflecting flag-state-specific overlays and regional specialisation.

PSC inspection focus: GMP currency, GRB entries, reception receipts

Port state control inspections under the Paris MoU, Tokyo MoU, USCG, Indian Ocean MoU, Mediterranean MoU, and other regional regimes examine Annex V compliance as a routine part of every general inspection. The PSC focus in Annex V is on documentary completeness and the consistency of documentation with operational practice.

GMP currency. The PSCO examines the GMP for: presence on board, approval by the flag state or RO, currency relative to the most recent IMO Guidelines (post-MEPC.295(71) for ships post-March 2018), correspondence between the GMP equipment list and the actual on-board installation, and presence in the working language of the crew plus an official language. A GMP that references a removed incinerator, a non-existent comminutor, or an obsolete category structure is a deficiency-grade finding.

GRB entries. The PSCO examines the GRB for: continuous coverage from the date of the last inspection forward, signature discipline (each entry signed by the responsible officer, each page countersigned by the master), correspondence between GRB entries and the ship’s deck log and engine log, plausibility of the recorded volumes against the ship’s complement and voyage profile, and consistency of cargo-residue (Part II) entries with the loaded-cargo manifest and the discharge-port records. Implausibly low garbage generation rates (e.g., a 100-person passenger ship recording 50 kg of food waste over a 14-day voyage) trigger deeper inquiry; falsified GRB entries are a criminal offence under most flag-state implementation legislation and trigger detention plus referral to the flag state for prosecution.

Reception facility receipts. The PSCO examines the ship’s file of reception facility receipts from prior port calls. The receipts evidence the actual discharge of garbage to shore facilities and corroborate the GRB entries that record those discharges. A ship that records frequent shore-discharge entries in the GRB but cannot produce the corresponding receipts is presumptively non-compliant; a ship with no recent receipts is investigated for unauthorised sea-discharge.

Placard inspection. The PSCO confirms that placards are present, legible, in the correct languages, and reference the current Annex V categories. Missing or obsolete placards are deficiency-grade findings.

Crew interview. The PSCO interviews the chief mate (who is typically the GMP person in charge) and a sample of deck and engine crew on the operational procedures: where is the food-waste segregation container, what is the procedure for cargo-hold residue handling, what is the maximum particle size for comminuted food waste discharge. Crew unfamiliarity with the procedures is itself a finding, even where the documentation is in order, because the documentation purpose is operational and not merely paperwork.

The Paris MoU concentrated inspection campaigns on Annex V (most recently in 2022 and prior in 2007 and 2014) generated detention rates in the range of 1 to 3 percent of inspections with Annex V findings as the cause; the campaigns are repeated periodically and shipowners closely track the campaign cycle.

IMO GloLitter Partnerships and the plastic pollution Action Plan

The IMO GloLitter Partnerships Project is a partnership between the IMO and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) that supports developing countries in reducing marine plastic litter from shipping and fisheries. The project, launched in 2019 with funding from the Government of Norway, has supported port-state implementation of Annex V reception facility provisioning, fishing-vessel gear-marking pilots to reduce abandoned-lost-discarded fishing gear (ALDFG), and policy reform in beneficiary states.

The IMO Action Plan to Address Marine Plastic Litter from Ships, adopted in 2018 under Resolution MEPC.310(73) and updated at subsequent MEPC sessions, frames the multi-year programme of measures responding to marine plastic pollution from shipping. The Action Plan includes: enhanced port reception facility provisioning, fishing gear marking and reporting requirements (developed through MEPC and the FAO Voluntary Guidelines on the Marking of Fishing Gear), facilitating delivery of ship-source plastic to reception facilities (the EU Port Reception Facilities Directive 2019/883 implements parallel measures in EU ports), reduction in plastic packaging used in shipping, and research into plastic pellet (nurdle) handling improvements.

The plastic pellet (nurdle) issue has received particular attention at MEPC sessions since the X-Press Pearl casualty in May 2021. Plastic pellets are the feedstock for plastic-product manufacturing and are shipped in bulk by sea in containers, in flexible intermediate bulk containers (FIBCs), and occasionally as solid bulk cargo. Pellet spillage during loading, discharge, container damage at sea, or general operational handling has been identified as a contributor to marine plastic pollution. The 1,680-tonne pellet release from the X-Press Pearl off Sri Lanka accelerated IMO consideration of mandatory pellet-handling requirements. MEPC has been developing guidance under the Action Plan framework, and discussions on potential amendments to address pellet containment were ongoing as of MEPC 81 (March 2024).

The IMO’s positioning of plastic pollution as a strategic priority area, with dedicated funding, partnership programmes, and Action Plan-driven amendments to MARPOL Annex V, reflects the elevated public and political attention to ocean plastic and the recognition that shipping is a contributor (alongside land-based sources, which dominate the total mass balance) to the problem.

SDG 14 alignment

United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 14, Life Below Water is the SDG directly aligned with the MARPOL Annex V garbage-discharge regime. SDG 14 commits states to conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources for sustainable development and includes specific targets on marine pollution.

Target 14.1: “By 2025, prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds, in particular from land-based activities, including marine debris and nutrient pollution.” The target encompasses ship-source marine debris under Annex V and links the convention’s implementation to the global SDG measurement framework.

Target 14.2: protection of marine and coastal ecosystems, addressed in part through the Annex V Special Area regime that protects ecologically sensitive sea areas.

Target 14.5: conservation of at least 10 percent of coastal and marine areas, supported by Marine Protected Area designations that frequently incorporate Annex V Special Area protections.

Target 14.7: increased economic benefit to small island developing states from sustainable use of marine resources, supported by reception facility investment and the GloLitter project work in beneficiary states.

The IMO’s engagement with the SDG 14 framework runs through the Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC), the IMO Strategic Plan, and IMO reporting to the United Nations on shipping’s contribution to ocean health. The Annex V regime, with its 1988 entry into force, eight Special Areas, eleven-category structure, and continuing reform under MEPC.277(70), MEPC.295(71), and MEPC.310(73), is one of the longest-running and most operationally significant components of the international framework for SDG 14.

For shipowners, alignment with SDG 14 has moved from a reputational consideration to a quantifiable component of corporate sustainability disclosures under frameworks such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), and the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. Annex V compliance metrics (volume of garbage retained for shore reception, volume of garbage discharged to sea under permitted pathways, number of GRB entries, number of reception facility receipts) feed directly into these disclosure frameworks.

Discharge distances by garbage type

The Regulation 4 outside-Special-Area regime fixes three discharge conditions that the master applies on most voyages: the distance from the nearest land, the comminution state of the waste, and the en-route plus minimum-speed condition. The three pathways reduce to compact inequalities. Comminuted food waste, screened to a particle size of not more than 25 mm, may go to sea where $d \geq 3$ nm from the nearest land with the ship en-route and making $v \geq 4$ kn:

Non-comminuted food waste needs three times the standoff, $d \geq 12$ nm, under the same speed and en-route conditions, because larger particles break down more slowly and the 12-nm line aligns with the modern UNCLOS territorial-sea limit:

Cargo residue classified as Harmful to the Marine Environment (Category K) also carries the 12-nm standoff and the 4-knot en-route condition, with the added gate that discharge is barred inside any Special Area:

Non-HME cargo residue (Category J) follows the same 12-nm outside-Special-Area pathway, with limited intra-Special-Area latitude set out in the Special Areas section. The 3-nm and 12-nm thresholds derive from the historical and modern territorial-sea limits and from work on dilution of organic matter in coastal waters. A ship discharging comminuted food waste at 4 knots, at a release rate on the order of 0.5 to 2 m³ per nautical mile of track, spreads the discharge over kilometres of wake; aerobic breakdown of the comminuted matter begins within hours and is largely complete within days in tropical water. The 3-nm line keeps the release off coastal-shelf habitats where benthic deposition of partly broken-down material could settle.

The 4-knot condition is the lower bound below which the dispersion-by-motion principle fails. At speeds under 4 knots the ship sits effectively stationary relative to the discharged material, and the plume becomes a localised point release rather than a track-spread dilution. The speed is read as over the ground (SOG) by most flag states; a ship making 4 knots through the water against a 5-knot adverse current is stationary over the ground and does not meet the test in spirit, although the convention text states the speed without qualifying SOG against STW.

Special areas

Inside the eight Special Areas, Regulation 6 prohibits the discharge of all garbage except food waste. Food waste may go to sea only after comminution to a particle size of not more than 25 mm, only at $d \geq 12$ nm from the nearest land or ice shelf, only with the ship en-route at $v \geq 4$ kn. The 12-nm Special Area line applies to comminuted and non-comminuted food waste alike, so non-comminuted food waste is in practice barred because the food-waste permission is paired with the comminution requirement. Category K residue may not be discharged inside any Special Area. Category J residue may be discharged inside a Special Area only where it cannot be recovered by commonly available unloading methods, only where both the departure port and the next destination lie within the Special Area, and only where no adequate reception facility is available at either port. The Antarctic Special Area south of 60 degrees S is the strictest case: only comminuted food waste, only at $d \geq 12$ nm, reinforced by the Polar Code retention rules.

Cruise-ship garbage volume estimate

Cruise-ship daily garbage generation is approximated from the total complement $N$ (passengers plus crew) at the industry waste-audit average of 3.5 kg per person per day:

The voyage figure compounds over the duration $D$ in days:

The 3.5 kg per person per day figure comes from waste-audit studies on major cruise lines, supported by reception facility records at high-volume cruise ports. It is an industry-wide average that masks variation: ultra-luxury small-ship operations run 5 to 7 kg per person per day on elaborate catering and high single-use packaging volumes, while mass-market large-ship operations run 2.5 to 3 kg per person per day through scale economies in catering and aggressive segregation and incineration. The figure assumes ordinary commercial cruise operation with a balanced food, beverage, and amenities programme; expedition cruises, river cruises, and day-charters deviate from it.

Worked example

A 4,500-passenger-plus-1,800-crew cruise ship runs a 14-day Mediterranean itinerary in May, routing Barcelona to Marseille to Genoa to Civitavecchia to Naples to Mykonos to Santorini to Heraklion to Valletta to Tunis to Palma and back to Barcelona. The Mediterranean discharge restrictions have been in force since 1 May 2009, so only comminuted food waste may go to sea, and only at $d \geq 12$ nm from the nearest land or ice shelf, en-route at $v \geq 4$ kn.

Total complement is 4,500 + 1,800 = 6,300 persons. Daily garbage generation is 6,300 x 3.5 = 22,050 kg/day, or 22.05 tonnes/day. Voyage total is 22.05 x 14 = 308.7 tonnes. Food waste is about 1.0 to 1.5 kg per person per day, so 6,300 x 1.25 = 7,875 kg/day, or 7.875 tonnes/day, totalling 110.25 tonnes over the voyage. About 70 percent of that food waste is comminuted on board through galley macerators and is eligible for sea-discharge under the 12-nm Special Area pathway; the rest is retained for shore reception.

Comminuted food waste eligible for sea discharge is 110.25 x 0.7 = 77.2 tonnes. Retained for shore reception is 308.7 minus 77.2 = 231.5 tonnes. The 231.5 tonnes spread across the eight port calls works out to about 29 tonnes per reception under even distribution. At a Mediterranean cruise-port midpoint of EUR 150 per m³ and an effective compacted density near 0.5 t/m³, each reception is roughly 58 m³ x EUR 150 = EUR 8,700 per call, and the voyage total is about EUR 70,000. That matches the indicative cruise reception cost of USD 5,000 to USD 25,000 per call. The GRB carries about 14 days x 3 to 5 entries per day = 50 to 70 entries, each recording the date, time, position, category, and volume.

Regulatory basis of the discharge regime

The regulatory chain that fixes the distances and conditions above runs from the parent instrument through the modern amendments. The MARPOL Convention 1973/78, Annex V, is the parent. Resolution MEPC.201(62) (adopted 2011, in force 1 January 2013) is the revised text that introduced the modern category structure and the prohibition-default logic under Regulation 3. Resolution MEPC.277(70) (adopted 28 October 2016, in force 1 March 2018) introduced the HME cargo-residue criteria and the Category J/K split. Resolution MEPC.295(71) (adopted July 2017, in force 1 March 2018) introduced the Garbage Record Book Part I/II split. The IMSBC Code is the parent reference for the cargo HME determination, and the Polar Code (in force 1 January 2017) adds restrictions in polar waters. Flag-state implementation legislation incorporates the convention into national law and supplies the criminal-offence framework for prosecuting falsified GRB entries and unauthorised discharges, enforced at the port through the regional MoUs (Paris MoU, Tokyo MoU, USCG, Indian Ocean MoU, Mediterranean MoU, Caribbean MoU, Black Sea MoU, Riyadh MoU, Viña del Mar Agreement). This article sits as a regulation-level child of MARPOL Annex V on garbage from ships and of the wider MARPOL Convention framework.

Common operational errors

A ship at anchor can’t satisfy the en-route condition. A frequent error is discharging comminuted food waste while at anchor in an outer roads area, on the assumption that the 3-nm distance test is the only consideration; the discharge is unauthorised regardless of distance from land. A second recurring error is misclassifying cargo residue as Category J without checking the IMSBC declaration. The HME determination is on the declaration, not on the master’s impression: a cargo that looks benign may be HME through trace contamination or biocide treatment that the shipper has declared.

The post-2018 split requires cargo-residue discharges to go in GRB Part II; recording one in Part I (general garbage) is a procedural error that PSC will note. Discharging incinerator ash from mixed garbage is another: the Category E permission covers only ash from items consisting wholly of ordinary materials, and mixed-garbage ash almost always fails the test on residual heavy metals from glass, ink, treated paper, and plastics, so retaining all ash for shore reception is the safer course. Treating the platform regime as identical to the ship regime is a fifth error; fixed and floating offshore installations fall under the stricter Regulation 5 platform regime, and supply vessels working within 500 m of a platform must apply it during those operations.

Falsifying GRB entries to cut reception facility costs is a criminal offence under flag-state implementation legislation, whether the entries record sea-discharge events that did not occur or under-record retained-on-board volumes to suggest higher sea-discharge fractions. Princess Cruise Lines entered into a plea agreement with the US Department of Justice in 2016 and paid USD 40 million in criminal penalties for systematic GRB falsification, and the case remains the reference enforcement action for Annex V violations. The last common error is forgetting the placard languages: placards must be in English, French, or Spanish plus the working language of the crew, and a vessel with a Russian or Mandarin working language that omits the working-language placard takes a deficiency-grade finding.

Limitations

This article states the Annex V discharge rules as they apply in the general case. Several limitations bind any specific application of them, and the practitioner reader should treat the rules as the start of the analysis rather than the end.

The HME classification is the hardest part to get right. The Category K or J determination rests on the shipper’s IMSBC declaration and the cargo’s GHS environmental hazard categories, and the master is entitled to rely on the declaration unless there is evident error or fraud. Where the declaration is unclear, ambiguous, or contradicted by direct observation (a cargo declared non-HME but visibly carrying plastic feedstock pellets, which are HME by the synthetic-polymer criterion), the prudent course is to treat the residue as HME and apply the stricter regime; the declaration is a presumption, not an absolute defence. Where the declaration is later found incorrect, the discharge regime that was applied may have been the wrong one, and the GRB entry stands as the operational record while the master’s defence rests on the declaration.

Special Area effective dates differ from designation dates, and the distinction is a real limitation on what the rules require in a given sea area. The Black Sea Special Area is designated but its discharge restrictions have not entered into force, because the riparian states have not certified adequate reception facility provisioning to the IMO Secretary-General. A ship in the Black Sea is bound by the Regulation 4 outside-Special-Area regime in formal terms, even though many flag-state policies and good-practice guidance treat the area as if the Special Area were active. The opposite error is now more common: applying the old “not in force” status to the Red Sea, whose restrictions took effect on 1 January 2025 under Resolution MEPC.382(80), because many onboard reference tables predate that change.

The whole regime depends on shore reception facilities that the convention assumes but the master cannot compel. Where a port reception facility refuses a category, charges a prohibitive fee, or lacks capacity, the ship must retain the waste on board for a later port, which the operational sections above describe. Reception facility quality varies widely between the HELCOM no-special-fee Baltic ports and some Eastern Mediterranean, North African, and developing-region ports, so the same compliance plan can succeed at one port and stall at the next.

The EU Port Reception Facilities Directive 2019/883 overlays the IMO regime in EU ports with its own delivery, advance-notification, and cost-recovery rules, and a ship calling at an EU port must satisfy both the Annex V requirements and the Directive. The two are aligned in intent but not identical in detail, and the Directive’s indirect-fee mechanism changes the economic calculus that the reception-cost figures above describe.

Every quantitative figure here that is not a regulatory distance is an estimate with a stated range, and the estimate caveat is a limitation in its own right. The 3.5 kg per person per day cruise figure, the per-port reception costs in EUR and USD, the cargo-residue percentages by cargo type, and the worked-example totals are order-of-magnitude planning figures drawn from waste audits and reception records, not contractual or regulatory values. A specific ship’s actual generation rate, segregation efficiency, and reception cost will differ, and the figures should be replaced with vessel-specific data before they are used for a compliance budget or a voyage plan.

Two further boundary cases limit clean application of the distance rules. Distance measurement near complex coastlines takes the “nearest land” as the nearest point in any direction, so a discharge 13 nm from the mainland but 8 nm from an offshore island fails the 12-nm test if the island is land; the ECDIS-displayed contour is the operational reference. Garbage held over from a Special Area cannot be discharged retroactively under the outside-Special-Area regime that applied at the time of generation, because the governing regime is the one applicable at the time and position of discharge, recorded in the GRB. Plastic pellets carried as solid bulk cargo are HME by the synthetic-polymer criterion and follow the Category K regime, while pellets escaping a damaged container at sea (the X-Press Pearl scenario) sit outside the cargo-residue regime entirely and fall under the general plastic-discharge prohibition plus the Annex III packaged-form regime, with the post-incident regulatory development still in progress at MEPC.

See also

• MARPOL Annex V on garbage from ships: the parent overview article on the Annex V regime.
• MARPOL Convention: the overarching pollution-prevention framework.
• MARPOL Annex IV Regulation 11 sewage discharge standards: the parallel sewage-discharge rule with its four pathways.
• MARPOL Annex I Regulation 15 discharge control: the parallel oily-water discharge regime.
• MARPOL Annex III packaged dangerous goods: the packaged-form regime that interlocks with cargo-residue handling.
• Baltic SECA / NECA regime: the air-emissions regime overlapping the Baltic Annex V Special Area.
• North Sea SECA / NECA regime: the air-emissions regime overlapping the North Sea Annex V Special Area.
• Mediterranean SECA 2025: the new air-emissions regime overlapping the Mediterranean Annex V Special Area.
• Antarctic Special Area and Polar Code: the strictest Annex V Special Area, reinforced by the Polar Code.
• HELCOM Convention 1992: the regional Baltic agreement that complements Annex V with a no-special-fee reception facility regime.
• ShipCalculators.com calculator catalogue: the principal computational tools for Annex V compliance.

Related calculators

• MARPOL Annex V - Garbage Discharge Distance Lookup
• MARPOL Annex V Garbage Discharge Distance
• MARPOL Annex V/10 - Garbage Record Book
• MARPOL Annex V - Garbage Disposal Check
• MARPOL Annex II - NLS Discharge Compliance
• MARPOL Annex II/16 - Cargo Record Book
• MARPOL Annex I/36 - Oil Record Book Part II
• MARPOL Annex I/17 - Oil record book Part I