Norway stands against beaching

In a piece published in Norwegian business paper, Dagens Næringsliv, the Norwegian Shipowners’ Association’s CEO Sturla Henriksen said shipowners have a responsibility to ensure the safe and environmentally sound dismantling of their end-of-life fleet.

“As an industry we can no longer defend that ships are broken in a way that puts health and the environment at risk,” Mr Henriksen wrote. “Therefore we say, as the first ship owners association in the world, no to the beaching of ships.”

With this, the demand for safe and green ship recycling capacity increases.

However, international legislation on hazardous waste trade is weak, with rules adopted by the IMO in 2009 – the Hong Kong Convention – have so far only received endorsement by three countries. New European Union legislation, expected to be applicable by 2017, offers independent third party audits of the ship recycling facilities seeking approval, and clearly disqualifies the beaching method as safe and environmentally sound.

On top of this, the EU is soon to publish a list of ship recycling facilities globally that meet basic environmental and occupational health and safety standards – none of the South Asian beaching yards meet these requirements.

“After more than 10 years of campaigning for sustainable ship recycling, this is an important turning point. One of the shipping industry’s most important front runners now shares our positions,” ” added Patrizia Heidegger, director, NGO Shipbreaking Platform. “The number of ship owners who put people and the environnement before profit and that demand recycling in proper industrial platforms is steadily growing.”

Thirteen large shipping companies already follow sustainable ship recycling policies including Wilhelmsen, Høegh, Hapag-Lloyd, Mærsk Lines, Royal Dutch Boskalis, Canadian CSL Group and Singapore-based China Navigation Company.

The Shipbreaking Platform is now urging other shipowners, including the European Community of Shipowners’ Associations (ECSA) to adopt the Norwegian position. “Greek and German companies sadly continue to top the list of ship owners that sell their vessels to South Asian yards where it is widely acknowledge that not even minimum environmental and workers safety standards are met,” concluded Ms Heidegger.

South Asian governments, on the other hand, need to “assist their industry to develop to one that recycles ships off the beach”.