Look around you. Ninety per cent of what you see in the room you're in has travelled by ship – says Rose George, one of the people interviewed in the documentary Freightened – The real price of shipping by Denis Delestrac. It is an awareness that is often lacking: the fundamental role that maritime transport plays in today's economy, the thousands of kilometres travelled across the oceans by everything we find on our shelves. They call it "sea-blindness", and this documentary seeks to open our eyes to a phenomenon that is growing ever larger. The prompt comes from a simple label reading Made in China, Made in Vietnam or Made in Thailand.

Why is maritime transport so cost-effective?

Let us start from the premise that sea transport is nonetheless the least polluting mode in terms of CO2 emissions when compared with air or land transport. The problem, however, lies further upstream, and the interview with American linguist, philosopher and sociologist Noam Chomsky is illuminating when it comes to understanding how the global economic system works.

Sea transport is so cost-effective that a product manufactured on the other side of the world can still end up cheaper than one with a short supply chain. Every small component can come from a different country, thus increasing the mileage attributable to the finished product. Or a product can be sent to China to complete a single step in the production process. Many of the costs fall on the environment or on society in the form of negative externalities, without anyone footing the corresponding economic bill. No one, or everyone — depending on your point of view.

As a consequence, more is produced and more goods are put into circulation, feeding the market, production, consumption and maritime traffic, while reducing the quality and durability of goods. Ships and ports grow in size; ports move out of cities and become increasingly locked-down places.

Without maritime transport, consumer society as we know it could not be sustained. Recently, however, even the major shipping companies have been running into difficulties, as demonstrated by the collapse of South Korean firm Hanjin.

A visualisation produced by some London-based researchers using 2012 data shows these ship movements around the world in graphic form.

The problems raised by the documentary Freightened

The documentary sets out an endless list of unresolved problems, aided and abetted by economic interests, lobbying, diplomacy, and the absence or difficulty of oversight. As if that were not enough, legislation in international waters involves multilateral organisations made up of dozens of countries — foremost among them the International Maritime Organization (IMO), whose structure does not make its regulatory role any easier, given that it is the member states themselves that fund its work and potentially steer its activities.

The environmental problems are countless, and the great complexity and interconnectedness of the system, combined with the sector's high levels of investment, mean that solutions are difficult to implement.

Maritime freight transport is responsible for approximately 2.5 per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions, and particularly harmful are sulphur emissions, for which the IMO only recently set a maximum limit, while greenhouse gas emissions are merely "under control". The quality of the fuel burned in engine rooms has a fundamental bearing on pollution: "We burn 200 tonnes of fuel a day — we can't think about burning good-quality fuel," admits one operator.

One example that illustrates the slowness and complexity of the negotiation process is the issue of so-called "ballast water" — the water cargo that ships must carry to maintain their trim while at sea. By taking on seawater on one side of the ocean and discharging it on the other, there is a risk that ships carry with them alien living species that prove invasive to the destination ecosystem. "After more than 14 years of negotiations among IMO member states, the convention on ballast water management was adopted in 2004," reads the organisation's website. It was only in September 2016 — 12 years later — that sufficient ratifications were achieved to allow this important management instrument to enter into force within a year.

There is the noise pollution created by ships, which has devastating consequences for marine life; pollution from bilge washing and leaks of toxic materials being transported; the abandonment or loss at sea of container cargo in storms or navigational emergencies; and, finally, the scrapping of ships at the end of their life and the disposal of materials.

Finding a balance on the ocean

Delestrac then explains the problem of the flag system: every ship must comply with the laws of the state whose flag it flies, and there are many states that sell their flags for money — states where the rules are more lenient and give owners considerable room for manoeuvre, for instance regarding safety systems, the level of ship maintenance, the transparency of the companies managing them, or the treatment of workers on board.

The international community has sought to counterbalance the flag system with the port system, whereby ports have acquired a certain power of control over ships, including the ability to deny them entry. In the same way, the International Labour Organization (ILO) seeks to establish minimum standards — global rules for the protection of the rights of seafarers regardless of the flag flying on the ship. This is a point that Nick Chubb, an employee of the UK Chamber of Shipping, the organisation representing the maritime industry, is keen to emphasise: "The problems presented in the documentary are real, but it is also true that the industry has worked hard to try to address them. The challenge is finding a balance between the rules to be imposed and the sector's ability to comply with them while bearing the costs required to meet them."

"To achieve anything, it has to be governments that act at a legislative level and impose rules," comments Delestrac. "But consumers must also play their part and become more aware of the costs that this system of consumption imposes on the environment and on society, and buy more responsibly." As is often the case, labels fail to provide all the necessary information, so the director proposes an idea for building consumer awareness: adding the number of kilometres travelled by the product or by the sum of its components. An idea that seems to appeal to Chubb as well.

Even where rules exist, the difficulty of carrying out thorough checks, combined with complex technical solutions, often makes implementation hard. It is once again a question of balance: if every ship is inspected, the process takes far too long and operations grind to a halt. But if the sample analysed is too small — as appears to be the case — the effectiveness of controls evaporates. Every year, 18 million containers worldwide are transported by ship. Only 2 per cent are analysed or inspected by customs, says Delestrac. Lobbying remains extremely powerful and succeeds in blocking or slowing down the necessary changes.