The London Protocol has been amended so that sewage sludge can no longer be dumped in the ocean.
Sewage sludge was formerly on the list of permissible wastes that can obtain dumping permits, but after a proposal was submitted by South Korea and Mexico it was removed and dumping is now prohibited worldwide.
Adopted at a meeting at the London headquarters of the IMO on October 7, the amendment has come about after a worldwide review of dumping practice concluded that it had declined considerably anyway over recent decades, with many regional conventions already banning it through domestic legislation.
However according to Annex 1 of a ‘reverse list’, the list of materials that can still be considered for dumping at sea includes inorganic geological material, vessels and platforms or other manmade structures and ‘specific bulky items’.
