Criteria for exemption from mandatory delivery of ship-generated waste changed at the turn of the year

To ensure that the conditions for granting the exemption laid down in legislation are met, applicants will be required to do the following in addition to fulfilling the current criteria after the turn of the year:

• submit a timetable of the ship’s scheduled traffic to Finnish Transport and Communications Agency Traficom
• obtain written approval for a waste management agreement from the port with which the ship has such an agreement and submit it to Traficom
• notify all ports along the ship’s route of the waste management agreement.

Furthermore, the exempted ship must agree to submit waste delivery receipts to the maritime information management system (Portnet). The submission of the receipts to the information system has not been opened yet.

The change is based on amendments to the Act on Environmental Protection in Maritime Transport implemented in spring 2021 (chapter 10, section 5 of the Act on Environmental Protection in Maritime Transport (1672/2009) (in Finnish) (External link)), which are based on Directive (EU) 2019/883 of the European Parliament and of the Council on port reception facilities for the delivery of waste from ships ((EU) 2019/883 (External link)).

The updated application (External link) form includes instructions on how to provide the necessary information.

Please note that the expected processing time of applications for exemption from the mandatory delivery of ship-generated waste is two weeks.