The actual color codes for different categories of waste on a ship can be found from the garbage management plan of the shipping company. But in general, on many ships color, “Red” is reserved for plastic waste, “Green” for food waste, “yellow” for flammables, “blue” for non-flammables like the metal cans or glass, “black” for ash and white/grey for the E-waste.

E.waste = Electronic waste for example chipset, I.C, cell phones, Microprocessor etc. In simple any electronic instrument that is damaged and not in use.

If you really go through the Marpol regulation specifically 5 in both recent and last version you will find as i did during researching for this article that; many a things are just copied and paste from last update. They just change the order of regulation and added a few new one. So yes although even in official release they have a separate section on e-waste and their management on board but there is very little to no information on e-waste in start and official definition. That is the reason why even the updated garbage records books don’t have them. I have provided the link to the official document to read for more information. I know its lengthy but some times we have to dig deep to find the things we look for.

Marpol annex 5 or V came into force for the all not military ship and vessel ( which mean any floating commercial or not commercial ship, yatch or platform ) of the signed countries. As of present there are total 150 countries who are signed on Marpol annex V.

Under 2013 amendment there was only slight introduction about the cargo residue harmful to marine environment. For example cargo residue were termed to be hazardous but no further detailed classification was given with proper disposal method other than transferring it to shore facilities. But under new revised convention A residue of solid cargo is considered harmful if it came under the category of United Nations Globally Harmonized System for chemicals ( It contains 7 different sub category ). The residue must be transfered to shore facilities when possible; if discharged must be as far as possible from the nearest land ( minimum 12 nautical miles ). The new law also made water collected after washing such hold ( for solid cargo ) un-harmful for the environment under Appendix 1 of the new law.