End of the Line - Where Giant Ships Go When they Die
by Michael Graham Richard, Ottawa, Canada 
on 03.11.06
We don't remember exactly where we found this photo essay (photos by Brendan Corr) about the dismantling and recycling of huuuge cargo ships in Bangladesh, but we thought it was striking on many levels (some good, some bad). We won't spoil it by over-explaining, you can follow this link and see for yourself. Some of the most informative captions were: "Conditions in the shipyards are dangerous. Many workers are barefoot and without gloves, carefully avoiding razor-sharp metal, hot steel, and pollutants. [...] For all its hazards, the shipbreaking industry employs, directly or indirectly, an estimated 200,000 Bangladeshis. [...] The scrap metal stripped off these vessels supplies 80 percent of Bangladesh's steel." ::End of the Line - Photo Essay, ::Greenpeace Website about Shipbreaking
Follow @TreeHugger on Twitter & get our headlines with @TH_rss!
Thirsty for more? Check out these related articles:
- Can You Recycle Teflon Cookware?
- 8 Ways Laughter Can Help You Naturally Improve Your Health and Lose Weight
- Forget Going Green Because It's the Right Thing to Do—Go Green to Make Your Neighbors Jealous
- Forget about Pills: Eat Away A Bad Mood!
- Does Recycling Really Make a Difference?
- 8 Fun Green Ways to Manage Stress (Kissing is One of Them)
Also be sure to look at Edward Burtynsky's amazing pictures at his site
you might have seen in at bldgblog;
http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2005/12/where-cathedrals-go-to-die.html
Thanks for posting about this. How amazing. I've never thought about where old ships go. What a strange and complicated notion, shipbreaking.
You're welcome, Amy.
Lloyd - good suggestion, those are some amazing pictures too.
Amy - I'd never thought about it either, it is quite amazing.
Thanks,
Lara
It is certainly a better option than just sinking them in the bay of some poor country. Something Japan has practiced in the past in Madagascar, resulting in multiple bays with toxic rusting ships just sitting around looking like frightening ship wrecks.
Can I get a shoutout to Foreign Policy magazine for publishing this photoessay?
=)
Besides exposing workers to potentially hazardous substances, ship salvaging is also a potential vector for invasive species - especially with hull fouling on old/neglected ships. When I read that Bangladesh gets cargo ships from all over the world - yikes!
There is a company looking to set up a scrap and salvage operation in Oregon using old National Defense Reserve ships (though presumably the workers will at least be wearing shoes). You can read more about the invasive species angle of that project here.
I would refer readers to the initial story by author William Langewiesche whose compassionate and thoughtful article "The Shipbreakers" was published in The Atlantic Magazine several years back.
If they set safety standards for protective clothing etc I think this could be a good thing.
Provides income for a poor country and recycles ships that would otherwise be sank.
I think the ship builders should pay for the costs of implementing safer working practices.
We covered William Langewiesche's The Outlaw Sea, which expanded on the Atlantic articles, here definitely worth reading.
That's pretty amazing. I'm glad most of everything gets recycled and reused.
On the Discovery Times channel they played a hour long, I think Canadian produced, program about shipbreaking. It covered the polution from the operation, the conditions the workers put up with and the accidents. One worker was injured when he cut into a fuel pipe that was not drained. With them beaching ships under their own power (shown in the program) the fuel and lube oil is drained, probably in a non-enviromentaly friendly way, after the ship is beached.
I remember them saying that not much shipbreaking takes place in North America due to environmental regulations.
Recylcling these ships is great but that is not the reason they are being sent to Bangladesh and India. It is so the ship owners can avoid the cost of decontaminating and safely disposing the vessels.
These cost are more than the scrap value of the ship unless you are able to ignore most of the environmental and safety issues.
These operations put the environment and a vast number of workers at risk. It is just shifting the costs from the ship operator to a part of the world they don't care about. Check out www.greenpeaceweb.org/shipbreak/ for some examples of the most toxic ships the west has tried to dump in the area.