Brenton
Bangladesh Shipping Yards
February 8th 2008 13:19
You are the owner of a Cruise Ship. It’s served you well but is ending it’s usefulness. Anywhere you want to dump it though is either environmentally sensitive, thus restricted, or expensive.
The answer comes in the form of a desperate poor country – Bangladesh. The Bangledhashi shipping yards are infamous for their shocking safety and environmental record. However, they are also famous for their overwhelmingly positive contribution to the nations staggering poverty, and unemployment.
Greenpeace campaigns against the processes of ship breaking on the grounds of their obscene environmental damage. The processes for dealing with toxic waste from the ships such as oils and other toxins are non existent – the muck simply seeps into the ocean.
Worse than their environmental record is the human cost of these ventures. Working men missing limbs is not an entirely uncommon sight in these parts. Heavy objects are dropped from great heights, welding equipment is used regardless of the presence of gas remaining in pipes, and processes for safe disposal of toxic waste are non existent.
However in a country burdened by poverty, where this one industry provides the majority of the countries metal, the end of such processes is profoundly ambitious at best – stupidly naïve at worst.
hipbreakingbangladesh2.jpg" target="_blank">Image by Wranzr Licensed under a creative commons share alike attribution license.
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