Easy ways to avoid oil discharges

New Zealand’s latest state of the environment report – Our environment 2025 – outlines how our marine and freshwater environments are being affected by pollution, climate change, and resource depletion. So, please take responsibility for minimising pollution from your vessels.

Even clean bilges can contain oily water mixtures. By taking simple steps, we can protect our precious marine and freshwater environments by minimising any oil being discharged overboard:

• maintain your engine to minimise leaks, and have a drip pan to catch any drips
• use sorbent pads in your bilge to protect the environment by ensuring any surface oil is ‘mopped up’ (when no longer usable, take sorbents ashore to be disposed of responsibly)
• install a float switch in a position where it can automatically stop discharge before any floating oil can be sucked up by a bilge pump.

It doesn’t take much to help keep our waters clean.

Find out more about the state of our marine and freshwater environments