3. Shipping Some of the busiest shipping routes in the world
At any time 2,000 sizeable ships in the Baltic Sea
Shipping is increasing, especially oil transportations

4. Many types of ships travel the Baltic.
One example is Cruise ships which carry passengers to experience a good time onboard and on land.
Three to four million cruise passengers and some 40 million international ferry and cruise passengers have decided passenger boats is still the right way to travel!
These millions of people have their everyday needs also on board which unavoidably leads to pollution.
For example toilets are frequented and showers are taken. All this results in sewage which ends up in the Baltic Sea –either directly from the ship, often via some sort of treatment, or via on wastewater treatment facilities on land.

5. Port Reception Facilities - challenges
What to do with ”fringe visits”?
This figure shows an estimation of the sewage delivery needs of all cruise ship visits in all baltic sea ports, 33 big and small ports, in 2014 from a recent HELCOM report. As you can see most of the visits have relatively modest delivery needs-indicated by the hump on the left side of the figure. If a daily sewage [grey+black water] production of 200L per person day is assumed [generous estimate to the cruise ships as the ships reported 170L and Copenhagen considers more than 130L as disproportionately large] this equals to less than 50m3 sewage delivery need per hour in port. However, you can see the tail on the right with high delivery needs of 200m3 sewage, or more, per hour spent in port. This fraction of visits result from very large ships visiting very short time after very long voyage at sea.
With this kind of overview in hand, and naturally taking into account that each port has its own particular profile regarding visiting cruise ships, one might pose the question what should be a Baltic wide standard for sewage reception capacity?
The cruise industry has highlighted that the 200 m3/hour flow rate, indicated in the figure by the beginning of the dashed area, is the minimum considered to be adequate in all ports in the whole Baltic Sea.
Ports have their own interpretations -and consider smaller capacities adequate especially in smaller ports. At HELCOM working we have always balanced between such different demands, as well as the demands of the Baltic Sea marine environment and worked for workable solutions together with the industry, national administrations and the civil society. We continue to do so also in the future and I welcome you all to take part in our regional cooperation.
HELCOM 2015 Baltic Sea Sewage port Reception facilities –HELCOM overview 2014