The Cutty Sark was launched in 1869, the same year the Suez Canal opened. Just eight years later, she made her last tea voyage. Steam ships had been given a shortcut to a new era of faster cargo and there was no way back for sail. Speed, efficiency and cost are ruthless, and today’s bunker fuel vessels, some carrying over 20,000 containers, move 90 per cent of all traded goods. Pandemic aside, the cost of shipping is considered almost trivial with these huge economies of scale.
Up until recently, however, the environmental and societal costs of this fuel have not been factored in, and the planet has been footing the bill. Shipping produces nearly three per cent of all global emissions. Noisy engines cause bio-acoustic pollution, ballast water movement impacts local ecosystems with invasive species, containers now litter the oceans following accidents, ships are broken up and left to decay in fragile environments, and iron ore needs mining, with all the related impacts. Cheap products have also caused a surfeit of disposable plastic, discarded into the seas. Prior to the sulphur cap of 2020, studies suggested that ship pollution caused 400,000 premature deaths from lung cancer and cardiovascular disease, and 14m
