What happens when
a given vessel – cruise ship, container ship, oil tanker, or anything – isn’t
worth refitting? If you’re the former soviet navy, you dump it an empty bay to
rust away. Private enterprise is usually a bit more motivated to recoup salvage
dollars, however – giant ships are after all giant repositories of recyclable
metals that are worth something if they can be recovered cheaply enough.
And that’s where a
process called “shipbreaking” begins. Ships are pushed up onto third-world
beaches where armies of subsistence-wage laborers cut them apart in generally
dangerous fashion. The beaches are wastelands of pollution – oil, chemicals,
and rust – and the work is as dangerous as you’d think it would be –
blowtorches, jagged metal, 100ft drops, and fuel tanks full of explosive vapors
conspire to kill or injure many shipbreakers every year. Here’s a quote that
highlights the issues around one example, the French warship Clemenceau,
decommissioned in the seventies, and pictured above:
…environmental activists of Greenpeace and
other organizations managed to break the tight security and board the ship to
shout slogans against it being sent to India, where impoverished workers
would break down the toxic ship, with its 500+ tonnes of asbestos.
Greenpeace, the
international environmental campaign group, is seeing red over the ''harm being
caused to the environment by polluting industries in India''.
(…)
In Alang, at the
ship-breaking yard, the Greenpeace campaigners tied themselves to the anchor
chains of the vessels that had come in to berth. (See the photograph alongside.
Click on it for a bigger image.) These "dirty" vessels have not been
decontaminated, and contain dangerous substances like asbestos and
heavy-metal-based paints. "We don't want to harm 40,000 jobs, but we also
want a clean industry," said Jayaraman.
Jayaraman said
that Greenpeace was fully aware of the strong conflict between the lobbies
representing 'clean environment' and 'jobs'. "But we are prepared for
this. In the long run, a 'dirty' industry would cost us dearly: both, the jobs
and the environment will be lost," he said.
Greenpeace is
concerned over what it sees as the havoc-potential of poly-vinyl chlorides, or
PVCs, which are considered among the most-hazardous chemicals in circulation.
The environmental
group recently backed citizens in Goa protesting
against the setting up of a copper waste recycling plant in their village,
Sancoale, pointing to the risks posed by PVCs in production, use and disposal.
Villagers were
literally up in arms, when Greenpeace stepped in to support them in an agitation
against Meta Strips. One policeman died after being attacked by infuriated
villagers, while three villagers were shot-at by the cops.
"Chemicals
from the chlorine class are very persistent. They don't disappear over time.
They're toxic, poisonous in a variety of ways. They can play havoc for a very
long time after their release," said Jayaraman. (...)
