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- Our shop
windows are the visible face

of a global trading machine

that operates behind the scenes

to satisfy our daily needs.

But are these windows as
transparent as they seem?

This film explores the
mechanics of an industry

that silently keeps our world spinning,

and hides behind every tag.

- Excuse me.
- Yes?

- You work here, yeah?
- Yeah.

- I wanted to know if
you have any information

about this jacket, about how much travel

is involved to create this jacket.

- Well, this
jacket, as it says here,

it's made in Bangladesh.

- Made in Bangladesh.
- Mm-hmm.

- Okay.

And that's all we know about the jacket?

- Yeah, that's, yeah.

- Where do the products

we take for granted come from?

- My shoes were made in China,

my shirt was made in Indonesia.

All these different pieces, items,

came from places across the ocean.

And it's really incredible
that all of these products

can be shipped around the world,

and yet, my outfit was still really cheap.

- Thousands of miles traveled

for just a handful of dollars.

- These came by ship, these came by ship,

my shoes probably came by ship,

microphone certainly, all
this technology came by ship,

the camera came by ship.

- You have containers
filled with scrap metal,

you have containers filled with hay,

you have containers
filled with waste paper.

- From the energy we use and
the food we mainly consume,

through to the gadgets
we love to play with.

- It's 90% of
absolutely everything.

- 90% of everything we consume.

- And it all came on a shipping container

from the other side of the world.

- Sea shipping has
taken command of our society,

an essential link in a
well-lubricated supply chain.

It works out of sight, to quench
our thirst for consumption.

Shipping is pervasive, yet
it slips under our radar.

- We were on the navigational bridge

for motor vessel Puelche.

She is a container carrier.

I'm Captain Razvan Adrianita from Romania,

and I'm the master of this nice lady.

- This nice lady
is more than 300 meters long.

It belongs to a German owner,

but it flies a Liberian flag.

Its crew's made up of just 20 men,

capable of running this floating city

with no other help.

In its containers,
80,000 tons of products,

transported from one end
of the planet to the other,

on behalf of thousands of exporters.

What's the real story
behind this industry?

What's its impact on the environment?

And how does it influence our lives?

- A lot of people attribute globalization

to differences in wages.

They say companies are
going to Southeast Asia

because workers earn less.

That's not exactly right.

Workers in Southeast Asia have earned less

than workers in Europe
and in the United States

for hundreds of years.

And you didn't have this
degree of globalization.

What made it possible was that

transport costs fell enormously.

It was possible to make use
of those inexpensive workers

to make goods that could
be sold in foreign market.

- The fascinating thing
about low transport costs

enabled by the shipping industry

is that, really, a company can treat

the whole world as a single factory.

- Before shipping became widespread,

it was common to have
very large factories.

You would have raw materials coming in

to one end of the factory,

and you would have finished goods

going out the other end.

Nobody does that anymore.

Nobody needs to that anymore.

- Shipping
has reshuffled the cards.

Today, distances no longer exist,

and a simple product such as a jacket

is a result of planetary collusion.

- When you see a made in
Bangladesh tag on your clothing,

unfortunately, you're still
not getting the whole story

of, you know, where the cotton was grown,

where that clothing was
sewn into a piece of fabric,

or where it was dyed.

If it has some sort of
embellishment on it,

maybe a rhinestone or a zipper,

where were those components made?

It may have been in a
completely different country.

All it's telling you, really, is a factory

where it was finally, the
final assembly happened.

- The made-in tag limits itself

to the last stage of a long journey.

The cotton comes from the United States,

but was woven and dyed in India.

The buttons were made in Vietnam,

from plastic collected in Europe.

That was then processed in China.

A total of 48,000 kilometers
have been traveled,

more than the Earth's circumference,

and all that for the
price of a subway ticket.

- Now we've gotten to
a point where somehow

locally made goods are more expensive

than things that are shipped to us

from the other side of the world.

To me, there's something
wrong with that equation.

Obviously, there are
externalities and hidden cost

that the consumer is not paying for.

- The equation
bares its secrets

and it may raise some questions.

How can this industry offer transport

at such a low cost?

- How you doing, sir?

- Morning.
- We're kinda lost.

We are shooting a documentary on shipping,

and we wanted to see if
we can get into ports.

- No, no.

Is this guy behind you with you?

- No.
- Okay.

- No, I think
he's following us or something.

- Hi.
- How you doing?

- You guys are
filming around the port?

- Yeah, well, we are trying.

- You need to pull out
and just pull it over there

before the red truck.

- I will, sir.

- What's up, buddy?

Are you going out today?

- Well, we
are shooting a documentary.

- Documentary on what?
- On sea shipping.

You know, shipping bringing 90%

of the thing we consume and everything?

- You have any kind
of permits or anything?

- Not for inside the port.

We'd like to get shot of the containers.

- Can I have your
license registration, sir?

- Under strict security,

shipping operates behind
the scenes of society.

And this impenetrability has a name.

Shippers call it sea blindness.

60,000 vessels constantly sail
the world's shipping lanes.

They are the blood flow
that fuels a global machine

that supplies seven billion humans.

If 90% of what is manufactured

or extracted from the planet

is transported by sea,

how can the shipping
industry be so invisible?

- The ports, because the
ships have got bigger

and they need more
water in which to berth,

they've got further
out, so you can't have,

you can't have a dock in the
middle of London anymore.

You can't have a dock in
the middle of New York,

'cause there isn't enough depth of water

and there isn't enough space.

So, they've built these
huge ports that are often

a mile or so at least, outside
of centers of habitation,

and it's just quite
difficult to the ships.

- And ironically,

the reason we can't see the ships

is because of their
ever-increasing dimensions.

- Ships get bigger and bigger and bigger,

and it seems there's no limits
now, there's no records.

Ship size that last for
more than a few months,

every few months, there's a bigger ship

that's just as launched.

- The Triple E is a newborn

in the shipping family.

With its 400 meters length,

the equivalent of four football fields,

it could hold 10 airbus A320s in a row,

or the Eiffel Tower, or why
not, the Titanic itself.

But its specialty is carrying containers,

18,000 of them on each voyage.

If we line them all
up, the result would be

a 120-kilometer long steel snake.

The more a ship can carry,

the lower the price of shipping.

Along with the economy of scale,

there's an invention that
has largely contributed

to reduced transport costs: the container.

- So before, you'd have a ship

that would take weeks
and months to unload,

'cause it would have 195,000
separate pieces of cargo,

now you've got, for example, 6,000 boxes,

but they can all be unloaded
and loaded in 24 hours.

- Over 500 million boxes

transit the planet each year,

500 million steel boxes

about which we don't know much.

- What do
we carry in containers?

What's on your ship?

- Some, except for them IMO cargo,

containers containing IMO cargo

and refrigerated cargo,

practically, we don't know exactly

what is in the container.

It can be anything.

- Each container is filled

and sealed by the sender himself

before it's taken to the nearest port

and loaded on to a vessel.

Once at its destination,
the box, still sealed,

is unloaded and forwarded
to its recipient,

and, exceptions aside, only the sender

and the recipient know what it contains.

- Usually, the crew and the captains

have no idea what they're carrying.

These are just all containers to them.

The ship line itself may
not know what it's carrying.

The ship line has received
what's called the manifest,

and the manifest has the
information from each shipper.

The shipper is saying, "We've
sent you this container,

"and inside, it has wool sweaters."

It's possible that that
container has wool sweaters,

it's also possible that that container

has other things inside.

- It's a mystery.

However, the United Nations
Office on Drugs and Crime,

thanks to its inspection program,

has some idea of what
these boxes may contain.

- In the last 10 years, we have seized

more than 100 tons of cocaine,

60 tons of Cannabis, tons of heroine,

tons of precursor chemicals
for drug production,

in addition to counterfeit goods,

misdeclared goods or weapons, et cetera.

I mean, there's no stopping

in listing what we have
seized in this program.

- More than
half of the illegal drugs

that flood the U.S. and Europe

arrive in these seemingly mundane boxes.

However, these millions of steel boxes

can conceal more than narcotics.

The container is a perfect Trojan horse

to bypass embargoes and
fuel armed conflicts

or terrorist organizations
around the globe.

Every port is a gap in the
nation's security apparatus.

Following 9-11, the U.S.,
together with its allies,

has put in place an inspection policy

aimed at scanning 100% of containers.

In reality, things are slightly different.

- Just 2%
of all the containers

in the world are inspected?

- Yeah, in my view, you
don't need to increase

the number of containers being inspected.

Fortunately, most people
want to follow the rules

and they are not criminal.

- But there's
still 98% that maybe--

- But most of the companies, most traders,

they want to follow the law.

They are not criminals.

- Stonewalling or indifference,

the authorities and the ship
owners close their eyes,

and hope a terrorist attack

on any of the world's 4,500
ports will never happen.

It's another symptom of the
generalized sea blindness.

- One of the biggest
container shipping companies

in the world, the biggest is Maersk,

which most people on the
street haven't heard of.

But it's absolutely enormous.

It has the revenues of Microsoft.

- It's extraordinary, if you can imagine

the equivalent of the software industry

without knowing anything about
Steve Jobs or Bill Gates.

This is a bit like shipping now.

It's like a very, very
important part of global trade,

but unlike software or
most of the sectors,

we know almost nothing about the companies

that run this business.

They don't attract any publicity,

so even the world's number two, three,

four shipping companies,
most people don't know

what the initials stand for.

They've seen the names on containers

but they don't really
know much about them.

They don't know who owns them.

They probably don't really
know which countries

they're based in, so it is kind of an area

of unusually obscure kind
of leadership, I think.

- Lack of transparency,

or magic trick of gigantic dimensions,

capable of consuming an entire fleet,

and a pervasive industry.

The shipping corporations
and their leaders

avoid the spotlights.

They pull the strings
of world trade remotely,

from European and Asian
financial centers, two continents

where more than 90% of
the companies are based.

Their annual turnover
exceeds $500 billion.

That's more than the total
revenue of the airline industry,

which makes shipping a
heavyweight in the world economy.

- Most of them are privately owned.

Most of them are family businesses.

We are dependent on a very private,

in both senses, industry.

- The top 10
shipping magnates on the planet.

These people call the
shots of our society,

and seven billion consumers
depend on their companies.

However, their names and faces
are anonymous for most of us.

John Fredriksen is an example.

This Norwegian is worth
more than $15 billion,

and his lifestyle,
although not as publicized,

is that of a rock star.

He never sets foot on his ships,

and travels by private
jet to the tax havens,

where his companies are headquartered.

- I think you can divide ship owners

in two broad categories.

On one side is the industrial shipping.

They don't really take a lot of chances

on what we call asset play.

They don't buy ships
to sell it for profit.

They run sustainable business
over long period of time.

The other part of the industry is the guys

that have enormous fortune, don't pay tax,

and don't speak too much
public about the business.

And I think John Fredriksen

is a typical figure in that sense.

If you go to a petrol station

and fill up your car,

it's a high probability that that oil

was actually transported
by John Fredriksen.

- Fredriksen owns
the largest tanker fleet

in the world.

Mostly based in Bermuda,
his companies transport

half of the crude oil
extracted on the planet.

But until proven otherwise,
this is not a crime.

- And we had a saying that it's a crime

behind every fortune.

And I think John Fredriksen
is a typical character

that fits into that story.

- In the 80s,

he had his first jackpot
during the Iran-Iraq War.

In league with the Ayatollah's regime,

the young businessman
placed his first tanker

at the disposal of Iran,

thus enabling the country under embargo

to continue selling its oil,

and to finance its weapons.

Later on, he made headlines in Norway.

He had allegedly stolen $10 million worth

of his client's oil to
fuel his own vessels.

And every time, the ship
owner slipped through the net.

If some ship owners find
ways to dodge the law,

it's because the system
allows them to do so.

- It's very easy for unscrupulous owners

to slip out of the boundaries
of law and justice.

And the reason they can do that

is because of the flag.

- This flag is also known

as a flag of convenience,

and thanks to it, a ship owner can wrap

a veil of secrecy around his business,

and vanish from the legal
frame of his country of origin.

- So you've got the coast,

you've got territorial water,

then you might have a 200-mile
exclusive economic zone

where that coastal state will
have the right to extract,

to exploit what's in the
water, what's in the seabed,

and then you've got the high seas

and the high seas belong to nobody.

And everybody has to follow certain rules.

Everybody has his flag on a ship

and that flag represents
a sovereign state,

and while that ship is in the high seas,

then it's the responsibility
of that sovereign state,

and the laws of that
sovereign state should apply.

- Once on the high seas,

200 nautical miles from any coast,

a ship is subject to the
laws of its flag's country.

However, most Greek, Japanese, Chinese

and German ships are registered in Panama,

Liberia, the Marshall
Islands, or Mongolia.

This way, they slip away from the laws

of their country of origin,

a move that can be very rewarding.

- For example, I'm a ship owner,

I'm looking to flag my ship,

I don't want to use my own country's flag,

'cause I am British,

so I know that there are certain taxes,

I know that there are certain requirements

regarding labor, minimum
wage, things like that.

So, I don't want that hassle.

So, I think, okay, well, let's go online

and I'll end up flagging to, I don't know,

the Marshall Islands, so,

Mongolia, which doesn't
even have a coastline,

or Bolivia, also doesn't have a coastline.

So, let's say I choose a Bolivian flag,

I can probably register in 24 hours

and certainly got their requirements

as to minimum wage.

I have lower taxes.

I have a much smaller
wage bill for my crew.

- And a simple piece of fabric

can reap massive returns.

In their frantic race to cut down cost,

ship owners have found these flags

to be a major asset.

Each year, they gather in
flags of convenience fairs,

where countries offering
compliant regulation packages

promote the benefits of their flags,

and make successful business
deals between cocktails.

- We flag ships in Marshall Islands,

administrator.

We're the third largest in the world.

- Dominica.

It's the Nature Island,

probably the most cost-effective

out of the registries.

- I would say the Bahamas is the best.

We're in the top 10 in the world.

- In the miracle
recipe of low-cost shipping,

the flag is the key ingredient.

But far from the needed
decision-making circles,

convenience has its side effects.

On the deck of the ships,

where one and a half million
seafarers live by sledded

and are victims of the
fixed game of flags.

- Flag of convenience is
a perfectly good phrase

because that's what they are.

They are convenient because
you can employ anyone you like.

So, before like American
ships, under U.S. law,

have to employ American seafarers,

but it costs about three
or four times as much

to run an American ship
with American seafarers

than it does with
Ukrainians or Bangladeshis,

or Filipino whatever crew.

- People take advantage of the vulnerable,

and that's what the
flag of convenience is,

to make sure it's a
system where the people

are the vulnerable parts of that process.

If it was a national system
with a national employment group

and a salary that was very attractive,

then you wouldn't have to
go to developing culture

and over less prices.

- Every era has its particular workforce.

And as is the case in other periods

of globalized industries,

often you'll see that there are changes

according to who becomes
more cost-effective,

who becomes cheaper, so the Filipinos

are quite cheap and they
speak very good English.

So they're very popular.

- Filipinos account for 40%

of the sea shipping workforce.

At sea, they are in five or six times

more than in their country.

- They pay me for my job,
but it's like a jail.

I can find job in the Philippines,

but then the salary is $100 per month.

How can I survive for that?

- Once past the horizon,

the floating prison, as seafarers call it,

enters a confinement area.

We live in a highly connected
world, but most ships,

despite being at the epicenter
of our global scheme,

have no cell phone or Internet
connection for the crew.

- People are on it for
nine months, 10 months,

and they should have Internet access.

They want to talk to their families.

They want to Skype them.

They want what the average seven-year-old

takes for granted,

that level of communication,

and they don't have it.

- Some 20 men,
isolated for 10 months,

on a 300-meter long ship;

three meals a day, taken in silence,

and in a handful of minutes;

and long work days don't really boost

the morale of the troops.

A direct consequence of
the long working hours,

isolation and lack of sleep,

60% of all shipping accidents

are due to human error.

- Try to make an analogy
between a car and a ship,

where you can stop the car,

you can lock the car, and get out.

If you are onboard a ship,

and there's a technical
problem with the engine,

irrespective of the
weather, one, on a calm day,

you can be sitting there very isolated,

very alone, different cultures,

panic in different languages,

and then in a storm, if you survive,

you'll be lucky.

- Seafaring is the second

most dangerous occupation in the world.

The first is fishing.

It's a very dangerous activity.

You're dealing with weather,

you're dealing with current,

you're dealing with a huge object

that you're trying to operate

in the middle of a very dangerous place.

It's not surprising,
it's about 2,000 a year

seafarers are killed.

- If you look at the worst crises,

it's been where the ships
haven't been maintained

over a period of time,

where the ship owner hasn't invested,

where maybe they're
not really ship owners,

maybe they don't love the
industry in that sense.

They speculate.

The markets are good, I can invest this

in some steel that ply at sea.

- Once again,
the flags of convenience

are implicated.

Thanks to their permissive
maintenance regulations,

ship owners only spend a minimum,

and push their vessels to the limit.

Three quarters of all shipwrecks

involve boats more than 25 years old

that have not been duly maintained.

Almost half the fleet is
made up of oil tankers.

When a hull breaks, or a shipwreck occurs,

the environment pays the consequences.

In addition to the shocking
images of black beaches,

oil spills mostly happen in high seas,

far from the cameras' gaze.

Every year, 150,000 tons of crude oil

pollute the oceans.

And that's not all.

When they are not fully loaded,

the ships pump in large amounts of water

in their so-called balance tanks

to ensure their stability.

Once the vessel is reloaded
and sufficiently heavy

to ensure its balance at sea,

this water is released.

Very often, thousands of
miles separate the port

where the water was taken,

and the port where it is discharged.

- Living creatures may be carried

from one place to the other.

And if the living creature
picked up in this port

is discharged into a port
that has similar enough

environment conditions
that it can survive,

that new environment may be a new home

for the flourishing of that new creature.

We call that creature an invasive species.

- Originally, innocuous species

become invasive when they are dropped

in a new habitat without
their natural predators.

Whether animals, plants, or bacteria,

the can destroy everything in their wake.

- Plant life, or the fish
life in that new place

will forever be impacted.

- The cost of invasive species

to the U.S. economy

is estimated at $120 billion each year.

In addition to their economic impact,

they are a direct cause of the decline

of 42% of endangered species.

The industry itself is also invasive.

It applies constant stress on
the ocean and its inhabitants,

who put up with it in silence, or almost.

- This engine makes a lot of noise.

It's bolted to the hull of a steel ship,

which is like a drum that's
able to transfer that noise

at very, very low frequencies.

It's...

If you converted the
decibels levels of noise

to the range in which humans live,

and compare that with the
range in which mammals live,

in the United States, I would be required

to have hearing protection.

- Marine mammals
have no hearing protection.

Constantly bombarded with low-frequencies

comparable to a hundred times the decibels

of a jet engine, they can't communicate,

are are unable to orientate themselves.

Disoriented by the noise
and fleeing from the ordeal,

many of them end up stranded on beaches

at the cost of their lives.

- The acoustic habitat of a Humpback whale

has been reduced by 90%.

We're wrecking the ocean
acoustically with ships.

- One third of cetaceans

suffer irreversible hearing damage

directly resulting from the
ships' acoustic pollution.

But nothing can stop the
great shipping machine,

nor the engines that keep it going,

noisy and particularly voracious engines.

- The heart of the ship is its engine.

This engine is the kind of technology

that can burn, can combust
any, any kind of fuel

that you can think of,
that you can make

from gas, to a coal slurry.

I think of it as an omnivore.

It can eat any kind of fuel

that has energy content

that can be combusted.

- Those omnivores
favor quantity over quality.

- We are burning 200 tons a day sometimes.

We cannot think about
burning expensive fuel.

We are burning residual fuel oil.

- Bunker fuel is twice as cheap

as any cleaner fuel.

And if these turbine
engines can digest it,

it would go straight
to the dumping ground.

- It is the leftover.

And some people will call this the trash.

This fuel smells terrible.

This fuel has high sulfur.

This fuel has leftover metals.

This fuel has ash particles, some water,

and this fuel is very, very thick.

- The shipping industry
has been a natural source

of disposing, if you like,
of this residue product,

and for many years,
frankly, went unnoticed.

Around 10 years ago, some academic started

to look at the impact of burning this fuel

particularly in coastal regions,

and discovered, of course,
that residue bunker fuel

had incredibly high levels of sulfur,

of particulate matter.

And indeed, they were burning fuel

at around, on average, 3,000

to three and a half
thousand PPM of sulfur.

For that so, it's calculated
parts of a million PPM.

Just to give you a comparison,
a car in EU has to,

by law, burn sulfur under 15 PPM.

And indeed, you know, some campaigners

began to compare cars with ships,

and the comparison was that one ship

was burning similar sulfur
as around 50 million cars.

- If just one ship emits

as much sulfur oxide as 50 million cars,

then the 20 largest vessels pollute

more than the billion cars on the planet.

And it's not 20 but 60,000 ships

that constantly roam the
world's oceans year-round,

spitting their sulfur
particles into the atmosphere.

- These particles are produced

at exactly the right sizes

and at very high numbers,

so that they can be breathed
easily into our lungs

and not only breathe easily into,

but they can get deep inside our lungs

and they can be deposited.

- Fingers are often pointed

at the automotive industry first

when it comes to air pollution,

while the shipping
industry escapes criticism

and burns the dirtiest fuel in the world.

Newark is New York City's backyard,

is silent and perfectly
oiled part in the machine

that supplies the metropolis
and half of the country.

For those who live near the
largest port on the East Coast,

ships pollution is not a
scoop, but a palpable reality.

- You do have the thickness in the air

that comes from the port.

You can feel it in your chest.

You could feel it in your eyes.

Ever since we came here,

I've noticed that I have more colds.

There's more post-nasal drip.

I didn't need and asthma pump before.

I need an asthma pump almost everyday now.

- Seeking refuge indoors

is a tacit rule all the locals abide by

to escape from ambient toxicity.

- The most polluted area is the area

immediately surrounding ports.

So you end up with basically
hot zones of pollutions.

And actually, the fact is made even worse

by the fact that trucks and rail cars

come to the ports to offload
boxes from the ships,

and then to deliver them
around the United States,

or around whichever country
we're talking about.

- Trucks are
a ship's best allies.

Combined with ships, they
make an explosive cocktail.

- You have air
toxics that can cause cancer.

You have fine particulate
matter that's basically soot,

gets into the lungs and creates asthma,

especially in kids and older people.

- One out of
every four individuals

in the community suffers from asthma.

Port areas are at the forefront

of the stealthy contamination

that knows no frontiers.

- The communities that live
closest to shipping lanes,

in and around ports, are
the most heavily impacted.

However, the coastal winds go far inland.

So, many hundreds of kilometers inland,

there can still be impacts

that are directly attributable

to the air pollution of ships,

where there can be health impacts.

It's not just limited to
those that can see the ships.

60,000 people per year die prematurely

from health impacts from shipping

around the world.

- The population
relentlessly inhales

the poison in daily doses,
victims of an epidemic

that claims thousands of lives every year

in the name of world trade.

The International Maritime Organization,

a branch of the United Nations,

is responsible for
regulating the industry.

How's it planning to clean up the fleet?

- The impact of new regulations

takes some time to
achieve its full effect,

because ships have an economic lifetime

of maybe something like 25 to 30 years,

but essentially,
improvements and enhancements

will apply to new vessels,

rather than to the whole fleet at one go,

because that's simply not possible.

- 30 years,

the average lifespan of a ship,

ships that end their days

in the graveyards of India or Bangladesh,

where their remains continue to pollute,

far from the eyes of the western world.

30 years,

the time required to
modernize the world fleet,

and make it less toxic.

Can the planet wait 30 years?

Shipping has a carbon footprint

equivalent to a country
like Germany, or Japan.

It is responsible for 4%

of the Earth's greenhouse gas emissions.

- 4% is a lot, actually,

when you're talking about addressing

the challenges biggest climate change.

Every percentage difference in emissions

makes a huge, huge impact on
the globe's climatic stability.

- Climate change is a threat

for the whole planet.

But it's near the poles

that its consequences are more evident.

Every year, the Arctic ice cap loses

37,000 square kilometers of its surface.

That's more than three times
the surface of the Bahamas.

As a consequence, new
shipping lanes are opening

on the east and west of the North Pole.

The ice caps melting to the
north of Siberia and Canada

translates into a major
geopolitical stake.

It opens new routes in
the east and the west,

able to cut the distances

and the cost of shipping by three,

between main Asian and European ports.

By 2050, the ice will be entirely gone.

And these new routes will be
practicable all year long,

which doesn't really bother ship owners.

- It's tragic in its
irony that we're again

creating this loop where we pollute more,

and put more heat trapping
emissions into the air,

accelerate melting, and then, oh look,

here's another opportunity

to upload even more.

- There are ships going through the,

are going to also contribute
to the global warming

that has formed the
route in the first place.

So, as far as it's good news for shippers,

but I don't think it's good news for us.

- Nature is very resilient

and has proven that ship can recover,

but there is also times
when we inflict more damage

than, you know, nature's
resilience can accommodate.

It's really, really deeply urgent

that we address pollution
from this industry.

Sometimes, that's what
leadership requires,

is pushing the envelope and realizing

that you're not gonna be
able to please everyone.

And we really need that kind
of leadership from the IMO.

But it's hard to be a
leader when you're afraid

of making anyone angry.

- The IMO
is slowly taking steps

to limit pollution from
ships in northern Europe

and parts of North America.

But enforcing the regulation

is proving problematic for member-states.

Who are they?

And what are their interests

within this organization?

- IMO is funded by its member-governments.

And rather unusually for a
United Nations organization,

the amount of funding
that each country puts in

is decided according to the size

of the national fleet for that country.

So, for example, the highest contributor

to the IMO budget is Panama,

and that's followed by Liberia
and the Marshall Islands,

because they currently have
the largest national fleets

in world shipping.

- The same countries
that sell their nationality

to the less scrupulous shipping companies

are the hidden side of the IMO.

They fund the organization

and make sure that no new regulation

will come to disrupt their business;

these same flags of convenience business

that is the source of all
the abuses in the industry,

that enables unscrupulous ship owners

to act in complete anonymity,

that encourages tax evasion,

that allows the exploitation of seafarers,

and that contaminates the planet.

The enormity of the fleet makes shipping

a highly polluting activity,

but it's still our best bet.

If we use planes instead of ships

to transport the same amount of cargo,

the financial and environmental cost

would be much higher.

- Shipping is still, by far,

the most efficient means
of transporting goods.

We shouldn't forget that.

It's a huge asset and
we all need shipping,

and we all rely upon ships to transport

our ever-increasing demands.

There are things we can all do,

and industry, in particular,
can do profitably,

reduce carbon and make money.

- If
profitability is the priority

for ship owners, money
can be a key argument

for improving the energy
efficiency of their vessels.

With a relatively small investment,

they can increase engine performance,

improve the quality of the hull,

or use other innovations,
such as the wind.

The result would be 30
to 40% saving on fuel,

more profitability for ship owners,

and less pollution.

A win-win solution would be

to raise awareness among
shipping companies,

that for the industry to be profitable,

it has to become more sustainable.

However, this industry exists

because it supplies goods to consumers.

So, consumers should also open their eyes

to these matters.

- The embedded energy use
and embedded pollution

in all that we wear and all that we use

needs to be accounted for.

But the first thing that needs to happen

in order for us to address it though

is for people to know about it.

- Information is
key to triggering change.

Can we imagine a world of transparency,

where the traceability
of the products we buy

could be easily available?

- I absolutely would love

to be able to walk into a store

and on the tag, it gives me

every piece of information

about where that piece
of clothing has been,

where it's traveled to,

how many miles it's traveled.

I think that we have the technology

and the resources to make that happen.

You know, the companies
that we buy products from,

it's their responsibility
to give us that information.

And I hope sooner rather than later,

that that's something that
is available to consumers.

Absolutely.

- Could a simple tag contribute

to change consumer habits?

Maybe one day this can help
inspire some manufacturers,

and encourage the whole
system to change direction,

and stir it towards a more
conscientious model of society.

- The biggest ships in the
ocean when they're underway

take a very long time to turn
around, to change course.

So, if you reckon that the
ships are changing course

even a little bit, it
can be considered to be

the start of a very big
change in the future course

on a long voyage through the next century.

- A long voyage ahead,

which hopefully will see this industry

emerging from the darkness

and openly show its face.

Policymakers and institutions

should be a part of this journey,

and take a firm stand
to reform this industry,

ang guide it towards better practices,

so that shipping becomes
a true driver of growth

that does not leave
anybody on the wayside.