'Container' tag

At the peak of the oil age, vast ships crossed the oceans carrying millions of tonnes of manufactured goods (often plastics) in large metal ‘containers’. At its peak, this trade consisted of an estimated 5 billion container journeys a year. Each container was sealed with a unique number on a plastic tag for security and tracking. These tags still occasionally wash up on our coast - presumably some of the estimated 10,000 containers that were lost from the decks of ships into the sea every year in the early 21c and beyond. Three major container ports, Felixstowe, Rotterdam and Thames Gateway, were located on the North Sea, all subsequently derelict for many years and now lost to the sea.