Tidal Beaches News

The NGO Shipbreaking Platform has participated in the 2018 Vicino/Lontano Festival, which was held from 10 May to 13 May in Udine, Italy. The Vicino/Lontano Festival has, since its very beginning, been closely linked to the figure of journalist and writer Tiziano Terzani, to whose memory the Festival’s annual literary prize is dedicated. It encompasses a broad range of initiatives and events, including debates, discussion forums, seminars, lectures, exhibitions, performances and screenings. Scholars, journalists, writers and artists of international renown gather together to analyze the economic, social, cultural, and geopolitical trends currently impacting our globalized world…

As in 2016, Germany and Greece top the list of country dumpers in 2017, according to new data released today by the NGO Shipbreaking Platform. German owners, including banks and ship funds, beached 50 vessels out of a total of 53 sold for demolition. Greek owners were responsible for the highest absolute number of ships sold to South Asian shipbreaking yards in 2017: 51 ships in total. Since the Platform’s first compilation of data in 2009, Greek shipping companies have unceasingly topped the list of owners that opt for dirty and dangerous shipbreaking. Despite increased pressure for safe and clean ship recycling from Norwegian investors and authorities, in 2017, the number of Norwegian-owned ships scrapped on the beach was on the rise: 18 ended up in Alang, Gadani and Chittagong.

16 August of last year the FPSO North Sea Producer was beached in Chittagong, Bangladesh. The ship was allowed to leave the UK based on the false promise that it would be further operationally used in the Tin Can port in Nigeria. One year on, the battle to hold the owners and cash buyers accountable for the illegal export of the FPSO is not over. The North Sea Producer (ex Dagmar Maersk) was deployed in the McCulloch field in the North Sea, transporting and extracting oil from the UK continental shelf for 17 years, and was owned by the North Sea Production Company, a single-ship joint venture between the Danish A.P. Moeller Maersk and the Brazilian Odebrecht. Once the field closed, the FPSO North Sea Producer was laid up in Teesport for a year while the owners were looking for buyers.

Of the 196 ships sold for scrap in the first quarter of 2017, 65 percent ended up on beaches in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, said South Asia quarterly update of NGO Shipbreaking Platform. 128 ships were sold for scrap to the South Asian beaches in the first quarter of 2017. 51 of the beached vessels were containerships. The other main shipbreaking destinations, Turkey and China, received 36 and 28 vessels respectively. Four ships were destined for recycling in other locations outside the main five breaking nations. Eleven workers were killed and at least four additional workers were injured while cutting down the vessels manually on the tidal beaches of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. In Gadani, Pakistan, yet another tragedy caused the death of shipbreaking workers.

Five European ship recycling yards have joined forces to effectively raise awareness of existing best practice and the fact that there is capacity in Europe to properly recycle ships. The newly established European Ship Recyclers Group (ESR), set up under the umbrella of the International Ship Recycling Association (ISRA), aims at reaching out to ship owners that are looking for clean and safe ship recycling. The NGO Shipbreaking Platform can only welcome this step and vows to support their efforts in attracting more business as long as they maintain sustainable practices. The European Union approved 18 ship recycling facilities with a total capacity of 1.1 million LDT under the EU Ship Recycling Regulation in December last year.

The list of all ships dismantled around the world in 2016, which the NGO Shipbreaking Platform has compiled and analysed, shows no improvements of the shipping industry’s management of its end-of-life vessels. Far from it: the Platform today releases data that indicate an increase in the number of ships sold for polluting and unsafe shipbreaking on the beaches of South Asia. In 2016, a total of 668 vessels were broken on tidal beaches, that is as much as 87% of all tonnage dismantled globally. “The shipping industry is nowhere close to ensuring sustainable ship recycling practices. Last year, we saw not only an increase in the market share for dangerous and dirty shipbreaking, but also a record-breaking number of EU-owned vessels on the South Asian beaches.

NGOs support EU Parliament Environment Committee call for ship recycling fund and off-the-beach stance. NGOs have applauded a breakthrough vote by a large majority of Members of the Environment Committee of the European Parliament (ENVI), across all political groups, to create a Europe-wide ship recycling fund, an economic incentive to finance environmentally sound ship recycling and internalise the costs of proper hazardous waste management. The fund is supported by the NGO Shipbreaking Platform, a global coalition of 18 environmental, human rights and labour rights organisations working for safer and cleaner ship recycling practices worldwide.

The European Commission has proposed new rules to ensure that European ships are only recycled in facilities that are safe for workers and environmentally sound. More than 1000 large old commercial ships, such as tankers and container vessels, are recycled for their scrap metal every year, but many European ships end up in substandard facilities on the tidal beaches of South Asia. These facilities mostly lack the environmental protection and safety measures needed to manage the hazardous materials contained in end-of-life ships. These include asbestos, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), tributyl tin and oil sludge. This leads to high accident rates and health risks for workers and extensive environmental pollution.

The International Ship Recycling Association (ISRA) is quite clear; Bangladeshi ship breakers who are using tidal beaches are, as ISRA understands the court decision, illegal. The ruling by the Bangladeshi High Court on the petition filed by the Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association to close the ship breaking yards is a logical outcome as beaching practices are against future international law. The court order seems to confirm ISRA’s point that the practice of using a tidal beach as a facility for breaking ships is not a safe and environmental appropriate practice for recycling ships. According to ISRA, the International Maritime Organization can do nothing else than to confirm this in the upcoming Convention on Ship Recycling.