Ship breaking

Ship breaking or ship demolition involves breaking up of ships for scrap.

Ship breaking in Bangladesh

Ship breaking in Bangladesh

Until the late twentieth century, ship breaking took place in port cities in the "First World," including the United States. Today, however, most ship breaking yards are in developing nations, principally Bangladesh, China, and India, due to lower labor costs and less stringent environmental regulations dealing with the disposal of lead paint and other toxic substances. However, there are a few "breakers" in the United States that still operate.

Ship breaking is a type of recycling. Most ships have a life-span of a few decades before there is too much wear to make refit and repair practical. Ship breaking allows for materials from the ship, especially steel, to be given a new life in a new vessel.

In recent years however, ship breaking has become an issue of major environmental concern. Many ship breaking yards in developing nations have lax or no environmental controls, enabling large quantities of highly toxic materials to escape into the environment and causing serious health problems among shipbreakers and the local population. Environmental campaign groups such as Greenpeace have made the issue a high priority for their campaigns.

Currently, many ships are also sunk to make artificial reefs after being cleaned up. A ship that has been scrapped is sometimes colloquially said to be "made into razor blades."

See also

• Alang
• Chittagong
• Gaddani

External reading

• End of the Line a photo essay on the ship breaking yards of Chittagong, Bangladesh by Brendan Corr
• Google satellite images of Alang Ship Breaking Yards
• 1998 Pulitzer prize winning Baltimore Sun investigative reporting series on the shipbreaking industry in Alang
• NPR host Alex Chadwick talks with Will Englund of the Baltimore Sun about a series of articles he co-wrote about the shipbreaking industry
• ILO publication on shipbreaking
• "The Outlaw Sea: Chaos and Crime on the World's Oceans". William Langewiesche, 2004, London: Granta Books. Contains an extensive section on the shipbreaking industry in India and Bangladesh.
• www.claudiocambon.com - contains a photo essay about the last voyage, demolition, and recycling of an American merchant ship in Chittagong, Bangladesh done in 1998 by documentary photographer Claudio Cambon. Some of the photographs from this series illustrated William Langewiesche's original article about shipbreaking in the August 2000 Atlantic Monthly.
• www.TheSchoolOfThought.com - contains one traveler's account of visiting the shipbreaking yards of Chittagong.

http://www.imfmetal.org/main/files/06042810465779/Shipbreaking_survey.pdf contains survey of Shipbreaking workers in India