Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Ship Breaking

Dr. Hopkins made a reference to single-hulled ships ditched in Bangladesh, which are being broken down by people with no other options. He showed pictures from a photographer, Edward Burtynsky. Here is a link to his website.

Greenpeace has been active in this area as well. Here is an article that asserts "the current practice of sending EU+ toxic old ships to developing countries is a carefully disguised form of the hazardous waste trade...It is clear that the EU+ has not only an enormous responsibility but an opportunity to bring the shipping industry into line with the norms of international guidelines on the transboundary trade in toxic waste. The EU+ cannot, on either legal or moral grounds, protect its beaches and environment from oil spills by exporting the threat to Asia and Turkey. There is an urgent need for shipbreaking facilities that can deal with the inherent legacy of toxics."

I also found this article, which calls for exporting greener, less toxic ways of scrapping to places like Bangladesh, India and Turkey because the steel claimed from these ships is important to local economies.

We really need to think these kinds of ideas all the way through.

(April 8, 2008, updated links).

1 comment:

Liz said...

Tervetuloa!

I've noticed from my analytics account a handful of people from Finland and a link from vaasalaisia.info to this article. That's so exciting!

If you have a moment, and you've come from that site, will you please consider telling my readers and me about the conversation happening at that site?

Thanks! And thanks for visiting.

Liz