Brussels, 11 August 2015 – The NGO Shipbreaking
Platform applauds CSR Netherlands, a Dutch-based network of companies, NGOs and
researchers advocating for corporate social responsibility, for using SAIL
Amsterdam 2015 to encourage children to learn more about sustainable ship
recycling and about the conditions in which old ships are dismantled in South
Asia. CSR Netherlands will set up a pop-up scrap yard from 19 to 23 August
during SAIL Amsterdam, the Netherlands’ largest public event and the world’s
largest free nautical event. Children will be encouraged to discover ship
recycling by working with proper tools and dismantle small boats that have been
decommissioned. They will help to sort scraps, as well as to label and separate
the materials.
The pop-up scrap yard will show the reality on the
ground in South Asia and illustrate the working conditions at the scrapping
beaches in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. Impressive pictures taken by French
photographer Pierre Torset showing toiling children, the dumping of hazardous
waste and unprotected workers will be displayed as well.
“We hope that through this workshop, parents and
children alike will learn more about the importance of sustainable ship
recycling, and also about the adverse impacts of substandard beach-breaking on
the workers and the environment in South Asia,” says Patrizia Heidegger,
Executive Director of the NGO Shipbreaking Platform, a coalition of 19
organisations working to promote safer and cleaner ship recycling. “In
Bangladesh, we still find teenagers who work in the shipbreaking yards day and
night, for little pay, and in dangerous working conditions. They are exposed to
risks that could be avoided if the ships were dismantled in a proper way. It is
often companies from Europe that send these ships, looking to make the biggest
profit, with little regard for the workers or the environment.”
CSR Netherlands is part of an international corporate
social responsibility (ICSR) umbrella programme financed by the Dutch Ministry
of Foreign Affairs. Its role in the programme is to work with a group of small
and medium-sized businesses and important stakeholders from six industries
including the maritime sector to develop social and technical innovations and
new sustainable production methods and to ensure optimum collaboration with
chain partners. The experience gained during this programme will serve as an
example and an inspiration to the industry as a whole.
“We want people to see that safety-conscious
scrapping of vessels is possible, and that most of the materials can be
reused,” explains Mieke Bakker, Maritime Sector Manager at CSR Netherlands.
CONTACT US:
For general information about shipbreaking:
Patrizia Heidegger
Executive Director
NGO Shipbreaking Platform
For more information about the event in Amsterdam,
please contact CSR Netherlands:
Mieke Bakker
Maritime Sector Manager
Rowena Achterkamp
Maritime project manager
+31(0)6-21255160
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