News

Breaking British end-of-life-vessels in Britain

London, 23 march 2004 - After the much criticised arrival of four ghosts (MARAD) ships to the United Kingdom Greenpeace, the British Labour Union GMB and Labour MP Peter Mandelson formed a joint alliance to change the current practices in shipbreaking. The aim of their project is to ensure that British shipowners will recycle their ships in state-of-the-art facilities in Britain or a similar state-of-the-art facilities in the European Union.

Obviously this also means that British government ships will have to be recycled in Britain. British shipowners, including the British Government, usually export end-of-life-vessels contaminated with hazardous waste to shipbreaking yards in Turkey, India, Bangladesh or China without decontaminating the ships first. Exporting toxic end-of-life-vessels means the export of pollution and is in fact dumping hazardous waste in countries without facilities to deal with hazardous substances in ships. Dumping hazardous waste is illegal under the Basel Convention and the Basel Ban. By starting to break British ships in Britain the British Government would be the first in the European Union to respect the Basel Convention and to prevent further pollution.

If the UK Government were to insist on recycling British ships in Britain, then they would take the leadership in accepting the responsibility for their own waste. If this practise were adopted globally, rich OECD countries like the US and the UK and shipowners world wide would recognise the massive benefit of building clean ships and making existing ships clean in the first place.

See also: http://www.greenpeace.org.uk