Ever wondered what happens to ships after they are taken off the seas? Colossal ships that seem to defy the laws of physics by floating on water contain a lot – A LOT – of potentially bad environmental materials if dealt with in the wrong way. But unfortunately it’s in just that way that a lot of ships are scrapped when they have sailed their last seas.
When a ship can no longer stay afloat or is replaced by a newer model, much of the time it’s sent overseas to poorer countries like Bangladesh and India, where, for really cheap, workers take it apart on the sands near the ocean. In vast stretches of beach that resemble huge junkyards, skeletons of ships and piles of scrap metal collect, disfiguring the landscape. It’s known as “shipbreaking,” and it’s relatively unknown in the United States where the only ships people usually see are complete and running.
The reason shipbreaking isn’t known so much in the U.S. is because there are more stringent environmental standards in developed countries for getting rid of waste. It’s also more expensive to abide by green restrictions. In developing countries, it’s easier to get away with cheaper labor and more harmful ways of scrapping waste.
One of the more harmful aspects of the industry is getting rid of the toxic waste stored in ships before their dismantling. Because developing countries like Bangladesh lack the means to do it any other way, workers take care of toxic material like asbestos, PCBs and lead by hand. It’s easy for material to leak into the environment during the process, ruining fishing and causing pollution. While there have been a multitude of talks about recycling material already, not much has been said about this pre-cleaning, reports CNN.
Yet the industry is booming because of the recession. More ships are being put to trash as shipping companies go out of business or reduce the number of ships in their fleets. The scrap from old ships ends up in other industries, like local iron and steel mills in developing countries. But that can be outflanked by the environmental devastation it causes.
Shipbreaking, though, might be seeing new international legislation to curb pollution and harm to workers. The UN International Maritime Organization met this week in Hong Kong to discuss the industry and form new rules, and today 66 countries signed a treaty on ship recycling. Countries agreed that shipowners would give an inventory of hazardous materials before it’s sent for recycling to developing countries, AFP reports. But the treaty doesn’t ban the practice of “beaching,” the process described above where ships find their ways to the beaches of countries like Bangladesh to be taken apart by cheap labor.
Go here for a Canadian photographer’s stunning work capturing shipbreaking.
Photo Credit: venstdest at Flickr under a Creative Commons License
