Maersk Line sets new standard for ship building and recycling:

Maersk Line’s Triple-E vessel will set a new standard for sustainable ship building and recycling by introducing the most comprehensive material documentation system the shipping industry has ever seen.

To eliminate waste and ensure the safest and most efficient handling of the ship’s materials once it is removed from service, each Triple-E vessel will come with a "cradle-to-cradle passport."

This will be a living document, describing the material composition of every piece of the ship.

The term cradle-to-cradle refers to the optimal lifecycle of the materials in a product: Specifically that they should either biodegrade and be absorbed back into nature or be recycled.

Maersk Line worked with the Environmental Protection Encouragement Agency (EPEA), a German organization which specializes in the cradle-to-cradle concept, to develop the idea for its passport.

“This is about eliminating waste. We are not only investing millions of dollars in buying ships, we are also investing millions of dollars in tonnes of materials, some of which are limited resources. If we can define and locate all the materials, it greatly improves their value and reusability for future vessels, containers and more,” says Jacob Sterling, Head of Climate and Environment in Maersk Line.

“Instead of finding new materials in the ground, the cradle-to-cradle concept shows the potential for companies to meet their needs for raw materials by using their products as healthy material-banks,” says Soren Lyngsgaard, director of the EPEA in Copenhagen.

Maersk Line already has a Green Ship Recycling Unit, which has worked with a shipyard in China to safely recover and dispose of hazardous materials on more than 50 vessels in the last decade.

With the cradle-to-cradle passport Maersk Line is dramatically expanding the scope of that effort from safe and effective recycling of hazardous materials to recycling and reuse of all materials.

Maersk said it will not be easy to map all the individual parts of the world’s largest vessels and it will require much of the next two years to develop the passport in time for the vessel’s delivery.

About 98 percent of the Triple-E’s 60,000 metric tonnes is made from five grades of steel. But there is also copper, plastic, wood, glass and other minerals throughout her 400 meter length, all of them manufactured by hundreds of different vendors. All of it should be documented in the cradle-to-cradle passport.

Source: Manila Bulletin Websites and Publications. April 3, 2011

http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/312607/maersk-line-sets-new-standard-ship-building-and-recycling