Global Plastic Policy Reviews

This policy aims to prevent sea pollution, from both land or ships. The primary driver for its implementation was political as this Act was implemented to give effect to the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, 1973 as modified and added to by the Protocol of 1978, the International Convention for the Control and Management of Ships’ Ballast Water and Sediments, 2004, and to other international agreements. As highlighted in Part 1, Article 2 of the Act, the Director or Port Master, and the Director of Marine of the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (a statutory board under the Ministry of Transport), are responsible for the administration of this Act.

There was moderate evidence available to complete the evaluation framework at the time of the assessment. No evidence supports that this policy brought a noticeable increase in recycling of plastics and reuse of plastics or a decrease in the use of plastics. However, there is evidence that the policy was enforced when offenders were able to be caught, so it is likely that some progress has been made towards meeting some objectives of the policy and marine plastic pollution (Singapore lays down spill laws, 1999). The main weakness of this policy is that it is difficult to monitor illegal dumping and track offenders at sea. There is a growing need to implement methods to monitor all vessels via a surveillance system to minimise this practice (Evanisko, 2019; Schuler, 2022). Another issue is that the government needs to ensure is that those affected by the policy are provided with economically viable options to handle the costs of machines and systems to treat water and remove garbage safely, and the costs of garbage collection and anti-pollution services (Evanisko, 2019; Schuler, 2022).

(Reviewed in November 2022)