European, Turkish and Chinese recyclers are
set to benefit from strict new EU rules on breaking up old ships, but the
practice of dismantling them on beaches in South Asia at great human and
environmental cost will still be hard to stop.
Of all 1,026 ocean going ships recycled in
2014, 641 were taken apart on beaches in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan,
according to figures of the NGO Shipbreaking platform, which campaigns for an
end to hazardous scrapping on beaches.
In South Asia, tankers, cruise liners and
other old ships are rammed onto a beach, with hundreds of unskilled workers
then taking apart the vessels with simple tools such as blowtorches. Chemicals
leak into the ocean when the tide comes in.
There is also a human cost. The Tata
Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai estimates that some 470 workers have
died in the past 20 years in accidents in Alang-Sosiya, the world’s largest set
of ship-breaking beaches in Gujarat.
Some 35,000 mostly migrant and unskilled
workers operate there.
However, a new European Union law requires
EU registered ships be recycled at sustainable facilities, with a list of
compliant yards likely due in 2016.
The EU law will be the first large-scale
implementation of the International Maritime Organisation’s 2009 Hong-Kong
Convention on ship recycling, which has only been ratified by three countries –
Congo Republic, France and Norway.
“I agree that we need to stop the shameful
practice of European ships being dismantled on beaches,” said Karmenu Vella,
European Commissioner for the Environment and Maritime Affairs.
The EU list is most likely to contain yards
in the European Union, China, Turkey and North America. South Asian facilities
are expected to be absent.
“The European list will split the market
into a safe market and a substandard market,” said Patrizia Heidegger of the
NGO Shipbreaking Platform.
LOW STANDARDS MEAN HIGH PROFITS
The incentives to part with an old vessel
at a South Asian facility is huge. There, rules on disposing of asbestos for
example are generally more lax, meaning the profits for breaking up a ship are
higher.
Depending on raw material prices, ship
owners can make up to $500 per tonne of steel from an Indian yard, compared with
$300 in China. In Europe it is only $150.
To counter this, the European Commission is
also looking at ways to reward ship owners for recycling their ships at
approved facilities, although details are still to be decided.
Indian shipyard owners are not impressed by
the European rules, arguing they are designed only to fill empty yards in
Europe. Fewer than 4 percent of all retired ocean-going ships passed through
European facilities in 2014.
Haiderali G. Meghani, director of
International Steel Corporation, a large ship recycling firm based in Alang,
said concerns about poor safety and environmental standards in India were
misplaced.
“We are almost near to European standards,”
he said.
The European regulation has one big
loophole, as ship owners can change the flag of their ships or sell it on to a
third party outside Europe which then scraps the ship at a non-approved
facility.
Despite this, the EU should serve to shame
ship owners who still dismantle their ships in hazardous ways.
European shipping groups such as Maersk and
Hapag Lloyd have already put ship recycling policies in place, saying they
would only recycle their ships at facilities which followed international
environmental standards.
At Europe’s largest ship recycling plant in
Ghent, Belgium, the volume of ships recycled has more than quadrupled over the
past 10 years to about 35,000 tonnes of steel per year.
Only about 30 workers are employed at the
yard, most of the heavy work done by machines. European groups such as Maersk
and CGG have sent ships to be recycled there.
“Large companies have started to come here,
they just can’t afford the bad press anymore of dismantling ships on some
beach,” said Peter Wyntin, head of recycling at the Galloo ship recycling yard
in Ghent said.
(By Robert-Jan Bartunek, reporting by
Robert-Jan Bartunek, additional reporting by Tommy Wilkes in Delhi and Ole
Mikkelsen in Copenhagen; editing by Philip Blenkinsop)
Source: marine
link. 24 March 2015
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