SHIPWRECKING AND RECYCLING POLICY
Ship Recycling is a very innovative concept where everything used onboard a ship will be reused after its life span. It is also known as Green Industrial concept towards energy and resources conservation.
Based on this concept, there introduced “Green Passport” theory for ships. What is Ship Recycling: Ships usually has average life span of 30 years. This required scrapping of ships and availability of so called ship’s graveyards which can earn some revenue to the ship owners due to recycling of ships as a property. This implies to safe dismantling of ships for reusing its steel, machinery, equipments after end of its life span for other various industrial uses such as steel industry, engines, furniture’s etc which supports local industrial growth, employment, revenue and sectional economy.
Around 70% of the scrap yard facilities are located in South Asia which includes Bangladesh, India, China and Pakistan. The availability of relaxation in environmental laws, good scrap yard business environment, developing economy and abundance of labor force was the reason of natural choice of growing business in these regions.
CONCERN
Environmental, health and safety standards in this industry especially method of beaching etc used during ships recycling process. It has been found that the ship recycling is imposing great threat to environment due to presence f hazardous materials onboard the ship which cannot be recycled efficiently in these ship recycling yards and handled unsafely. This is causing potential damage to the environment and health of workers involved in this industry. The presence of hazardous material like asbestos, metal parts, hydrocarbons, CUFF, toxic chemicals, sludge, oil spills and toxic gases is prudent in these yards during ship recycling without any hazardous waste management plan and knowledge.
There has been observed lack of decontamination prior arrival of ships and later safe waste disposal. Often environment and human are exposed to these on recycled wastes. Also work related injuries are raised during whole lengthy dismantling process and it has been considered as a dumping ground of waste. As per ILL, working at ship recycling yards is considered most dangerous.
INTRODUCTION TO CONVENTION FOR SHIP RECYCLING, HONKING CONVENTION
The issue of ship recycling was on international agenda for many years. First convention which dealt with Control of Turnaround’s and Movement of Hazardous Waste & their disposal was BASEL Convention, 1989. Later IMO was invited to develop a “new legally binding instrument on ship’s recycling”. In view of above concerns with regard to recycling of ships, development of Honking Convention for the safe and environment friendly recycling of ships was adopted in 2009 at Honking. Main purpose of this convention is safe recycling/Scrapping of ships which should minimize any risk to environment, human life and to lay guidelines through the convention to develop safe working environment in these ship breaking yards.
All the parties involved shall be comply with this convention and shall take all necessary measures required by this convention. Technical assistance guidelines under resolution MOPE. 197 (62), MOPE. 196 (62), MOPE. 210 (63) & MOPE. 211 (63) were developed and adopted to assist member countries for effective and efficient implementation of convention. The convention also issues guidelines for surveying, certification and inspection which were developed by resolution MOPE. 222 (64) & MOPE. 223 (64) in 2012 which shows serious measures towards implementation of this convention by IMO.
For this, the instrument adopted by IMO member states shall be ratified by at least 15 states representing 40% of the world Gross Tonnage (GET) to come into force. Also, combined maximum annual ship recycling volume proceeding last 10 years constitutes not less than 3% of Gross Tonnage (GET) of combined fleet of same fleet. There are approximately 1 670 ships need to be recycled each year (Data by IIS Fairly). Mainly 5 countries Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, China & Turkey recycled around 98% of the world’s tonnage.
