From cargo ships to cruise liners, bulk carriers to oil tankers, more than 109,000 ships ply the world’s waters, but the fleet is ageing fast and polluting the planet.
Some 1,800 ships become obsolete each year and are sent away to be dismantled - and that number is expected to rise in the next few years, with one in two ships more than 15 years old.
After a ship reaches end of life, its story is not over.
Context talks you through their long afterlife, when a host of components, parts and materials are stripped out and taken apart for a new start in other industries.
What happens when ships die?
When a ship gets old and too fragile to repair, its owner sells the carcass to international intermediaries - or “cash buyers” - in hubs such as Dubai, Singapore or Hong Kong.
They in turn sell the vessels on to ship breakers.
South Asian yards break about 85 per cent to 90 per cent of decommissioned ships. The vessel is driven onto the tidal flat of a beach - a process known as ‘beaching’ - where workers cut it up by hand, piece by piece.
Safer demolition sees a ship hauled onto concrete slipways or dry docks, then mechanical tools such as cranes are used to take the vessel apart.
Yards in Europe or in Turkey’s Aliağa zone use these safer methods, but they handle only a small share of scrap ships.
Some parts - steel bars, pipes or plates - go for direct reuse, while a bigger share of the scrap steel is rerolled or melted into steel that can used in building or manufacturing.
Who runs the recycling?
Ships are largely owned by rich countries - Europe accounts for 40 per cent - but recycling is concentrated in poorer nations.
In the last few decades, South Asia has used its abundant unskilled labour and lax rules to emerge as the world’s leader in dismantling old ships.
The ship recycling yards in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan directly employ tens of thousands of mostly temporary workers, while hundreds of thousands of jobs are created in the steel mills and small roadside workshops that process the scrap.
What are the pros and cons of recycling?
By supplying scrap for steel-making, recycling old ships cuts a significant amount of planet-heating emissions.
Making steel from a ton of scrap saves 1.5 tonnes of CO2 compared to that made from an equivalent amount of iron ore.
Countries such as Bangladesh that lack iron ore mines get most of their raw, steel-making material from old ships - which are sometimes known as “floating mines”.
But the benefits are partly offset by the risks that lie hidden in many old ships - asbestos and organic chemicals that can pose serious health hazards to the workers who scrap them.
Heavy metal, oil residues and sludge waste from dismantled ships may also seep into the environment, causing pollution.
Amid the poor safety conditions, 470 workers have been killed in accidents in shipbreaking yards since 2009, according to the NGO Shipbreaking Platform.
The industry has been working on improving its safety standards and environmental safeguards.
One major piece of international law seeking to control these risks is a 1989 Basel convention that prohibits the transfer of hazardous waste - commonly found in old ships - from rich countries to developing countries.
Another United Nations agreement will soon require hazardous waste to be listed before a ship is sent on to a recycling country - and ship recyclers will need official approval for their dismantling plans before any ship is demolished.
Adopted in 2009, this Hong Kong convention comes into force in June with the aim of improving the sector’s safety and environmental record.
But human rights and environmental activists call for ship recycling countries to adopt more radical changes.
They want a phase-out of the beaching method of recycling, and urge ship owners from the Global North to support yard owners and workers with more funding and technical support.
This story was published with permission from Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, climate change, resilience, women’s rights, trafficking and property rights. Visit https://www.context.news/.
