Researcher(s):
Audrey Mayer, S. M. Mizanur Rahman
Institution:
Michigan Technological University
Sustainable
Ship-Recycling in Bangladesh
This project will improve
the sustainability of the ship-recycling industry in Bangladesh, where millions
of tons of metal are recovered from hundreds of beached container ships, oil
tankers, and cruise liners annually. We will investigate how recycled metal
flows through the metal smith community in Dhaka, and identify improvements
that reduce environmental impacts and maintain social networks.
Why This
Project Is Important
Every year, thousands of
container ships, oil tankers, and cruise liners are beached on the shores of
India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh to be broken down and recycled. In Bangladesh
alone, the beaching of hundreds of massive ships contributes over 70% of the
country’s metal resources, but contaminates the environment and food resources
with heavy metals, oil, and asbestos. The magnitude of the flow of used ships
to these coastlines illustrates the global scale of humanity's consumption of
oil and resources, and its consequences for the poorest among us. While the
metal from the ships represents a critical resource for a growing population in
Bangladesh, the manner in which these ships are dismantled (by hand with ropes
and blow torches) is damaging to people's health and their environment. Our
project will use theories from a field called "industrial ecology" to
try to improve the economic, social, and environmental dynamics of this
ship-recycling industry, to ensure that it is truly sustainable.
Project
Description
There are about 200-300
ships beached in the Chittagong (Bangladesh) ship breaking yards each year,
providing around 1.5 million tons of scrap ferrous metal, more than 70% of the
country’s steel demand. Over 20,000 people work as day laborers in the
industry, at over 10,000 small and medium business engaged in processing these
metals into final products. Bangladesh is assumed to be second largest country,
after India, in the world that rips the ships apart. Despite these dynamics,
few studies have investigated the social aspects of the industry, and no study
has tracked the material flow of the industry across the country.
Scrap metals from the
ship-breaking industry in Bangladesh are drawn from Chittagong (where the
retired ships are beached) to a community in the capital city Dhaka, five
hundred miles away from Chittagong, for further processing. We hypothesize that
the relationships among the members of the Dhaka community (and between Dhaka
and Chittagong) dictates resource flows. Based on previous studies, we know
that metal-working skill, familial and social ties, and long-term reciprocal
business relationships can restrain an individual’s competitive mentality and
encourage cooperation, and hence resource sharing.
This study will focus on
two issues; tracking scrap ferrous metal flows and analyzing the community’s
social relations with respect to those resource flows. We will conduct this
research by interviewing two groups of people: metal resource contractors of
the ship breaking industry (the people who move the metal from the ship
breaking yards to the metal workers), and metal working business owners in the
Dhaka community (the people who turn the scrap metal into products such as
rebar for building construction).
We are expecting to
conduct about fifty interviews, each of which may last for about an hour. Our
questions will largely focus on the level of family ties among businesses,
level of reciprocity, resource processing and collection methods, etc.
Interviews will be conducted in the local Bangla language. They will be
recorded, transcribed, coded, and then analyzed using qualitative and
quantitative methods to understand the level of social relations and
cooperation involved and the extent responsible for metal flow direction. We
will also interview people who either control the purchase of ships or the
distribution of metal recovered from the ships into the metal smith communities.
We will trace the amount of metal they distribute by weights and by element on
an annual basis. To understand the distribution of metals beyond these key
informants, we will largely depend on the intermediaries of those who maintain
contacts and orders with both the ship-breaking contractors and the small and
medium firm owners of metals recycling businesses. Those people will be
identified through interviews of community business people and metal
contractors. Finally, we expect to contact local and regional government
officials and statistical officials to find data that is relevant to the metal
distribution, as well as relevant laws and programs for the industry.
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