Breaking point

As the sun sets over the Bay of Bengal on a warm January evening in 2023, a 40-year-old man named Rashedul Islam arrives at work. His place of employment is on a beach about ten miles north of Chattogram (Chittagong), Bangladesh, but it’s not a swimsuit-and-cocktail kind of beach. It’s a beach where once-great machines are destroyed — a graveyard with an ocean view.

Like any other evening, Islam reports to a complex behind a concrete wall topped with rusting coils of barbed wire. Stenciled on the wall, in English, is the adage: “KNOW SAFETY — NO PAIN. NO SAFETY — KNOW PAIN.”

Islam’s job is to tear down retired ocean-going ships piece by piece, vessels often as big as a skyscraper turned on its side. He is one of dozens of thousands of men employed by the major shipbreaking yards that ring the Indian Ocean. Tonight, he’s working on an oil tanker that most recently carried the name MT Tesla. His task is to retrieve the large steel plates that are cut away from the ship and to lug them back to shore. All of this is done completely manually; the sand is too soft to support the kind of heavy machinery that would make the process much easier, much quicker — and much safer.

It's a maneuver Islam has performed probably hundreds, if not thousands, of times before. But this time, the rope he’s using to haul the scrap metal snaps under the extreme tension. Before Islam can react, a heavy piece of iron strikes his head. It's a fatal blow.

Rashedul Islam's story is especially tragic because it is neither unusual nor surprising — shipbreaking is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world (and is harmful to the environment, too). Still, it is a highly profitable and necessary business with little oversight, regulation, or enforcement to curtail damaging and irresponsible practices.

At any given time, upwards of 100,000 seaworthy ships are plying the world’s waters, from personal pleasure yachts to behemoth luxury liners and supertankers. Like most manufactured machines, though, they have a shelf life — about 27 years, on average.

Every year, more than 700 ships are deemed to have outlived their usefulness.

So what’s the plan when something that weighs up to 200,000 tons needs to be put out to pasture? In most cases, these retired ships are stripped down and broken apart until there’s virtually nothing left. Any salvageable components are sorted and resold on the secondhand market, while the hull itself is cut into pieces and recycled into new materials.

In theory, this shipbreaking process should entail numerous benefits: It occupies hundreds of thousands of workers, many of whom lack alternative employment opportunities; it ensures that valuable resources are reused; and, if done properly, it enables the safe disposal of the harmful substances that all ships carry.

The reality, however, is far bleaker.

In most cases, retired ships are run aground on tidal beaches in South Asia, where savvy shipbreaking companies exploit lax (or nonexistent) environmental and labor regulations to deconstruct ships as quickly and inexpensively as possible.

The human and environmental costs of such avaricious shipbreaking practices are wide-ranging, says Nicola Mulinaris, the Senior Communication and Policy Advisor for the  NGO Shipbreaking Platform , a global coalition of 17 organizations collectively advocating for the responsible dismantling of ships. Moreover, the global shipping industry is well aware of the abject conditions at the breaking yards. But as Mulinaris explains, it all comes down to the bottom line: "[If] a ship owner scraps a vessel properly, they simply earn less money." The numbers clearly bear this out.

Ships are inherently hazardous structures. Toxic materials like asbestos, lead, mercury, and other heavy metals are used in various components, and if not handled carefully, they can cause serious, lasting health issues. Others, like ballast water and oil residue, can wreak havoc on local ecosystems. In fact, these substances are so prevalent that the end-of-life ships themselves are legally classified as hazardous waste.

But the shipbreaking yards of South Asia are ill-equipped to handle these materials.

"In terms of environmental damage, the problem is a lot of what is cut is released into the intertidal area, and then is quickly washed away by the currents," says Mulinaris.

The effects of shipbreaking on the environment have been profound. In Bangladesh, researchers from the University of Chittagong  estimate  that irresponsible shipbreaking has driven 21 species of fish and crustaceans to extinction, while pushing 11 other species to the brink. Additionally, thousands of mangrove trees have been cut down to create more beachfront for ships — trees that play a vital role in mitigating the effects of monsoons.

And then there’s the direct human impact of shipbreaking.

While those ecological effects are deeply concerning, the industry also subjects workers to extremely dangerous work in environments where safety is not prioritized.

Many shipbreakers are unskilled laborers, driven by financial necessity to seek employment at the breaking yards. They are often forced to work 12-to-16-hour days for paltry wages — a worker at a Bangladeshi breaking yard may earn as little as $53 in a month. Many shipbreaking companies do not offer benefits, and workers have virtually no protection from sudden termination. They receive minimal training and frequently lack access to protective equipment. Even the most basic labor regulations are routinely flouted; for example, night shifts, such as the one during which Rashedul Islam lost his life, are supposed to be illegal, and child labor is still purported to be used in some shipbreaking yards in Chattogram.

These conditions create a workplace where accidents are far too common. Every year, dozens of shipbreaking workers die from traumatic incidents, and even more suffer serious injuries. They might fall from a great height, or be crushed by a piece of the ship, or inadvertently trigger a deadly explosion. In fact, on the very same day that Rashedul Islam was killed, another worker was severely burned in a fire aboard a ship in a nearby yard.

On top of the immediate peril that shipbreakers face every single day, they’re also at risk of significant lasting harm due to their exposure to those hazardous materials. Mesothelioma, an aggressive form of cancer, has been linked to work in shipbreaking yards, according to a study by the  National Institutes of Health . Other respiratory ailments and life-threatening conditions are also common. In Bangladesh, the life expectancy for men employed in the shipbreaking industry is a full 20 years younger than the country’s general male population.

Despite the destructive outcomes of shipbreaking, these operations proceed in plain sight.

The international community has taken steps to curtail harmful and exploitative ship-scrapping practices. The United Nations Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal (commonly known as the Basel Convention), for instance, stipulates that hazardous waste — including end-of-life ships — may not be exported from the  38 OECD member countries  to non-OECD countries.

In practice, though, it’s remarkably easy to circumvent such regulations.

An end-of-life ship can go from a harbor in a Basel Convention-observing state to a beach in Chattogram, Alang, or Gadani in just a few basic steps.

Because the Basel Convention is meant to be enforced by the country exporting waste, ship owners will simply move their vessels to international waters, or to ports in less stringent nations, before declaring their ships to be waste. This way, they cannot be prosecuted by authorities in the country where the export originated. And that’s just part of the chicanery.

A crucial step involves the sale of the end-of-life vessel to a cash buyer. These transactions of millions of dollars often occur in reputable ports and are structured to allow the seller to ostensibly wash their hands of the vessel — they can claim that they didn’t know the ship was going to end up on a breaking beach. But sale prices reveal this to be a lie, as South Asia-based buyers pay several hundred dollars more per ton than OECD buyers. It’s still another layer of obfuscation that makes enforcement of safe practices difficult.

Every ship in international waters must be officially registered to a country, termed the ship’s “flag country.” As a result, some nations have made a cottage industry out of registering foreign ships. Several countries have become havens for ships looking to operate outside the law — including those that would be sent to South Asian breaking yards.

The Tesla, for instance, was registered to Saint Kitts and Nevis when it arrived in Chattogram. As of early 2023, this Caribbean island nation of less than 50,000 people had more than 3,300 ships in its registry. According to data compiled by the NGO Shipbreaking Platform, 653 ships bearing the Saint Kitts and Nevis flag wound up on beaches in Pakistan, India, or Bangladesh between 2013 and 2022.

The chart below shows the ten most common flags among all ships recycled between 2013 and 2022.

With the ship “flagged out,” the cash buyer will then turn around and sell it to a breaking yard. South Asian companies typically pay up to $600 per ton (compared to $100 per ton in Europe). These yards can afford to pay such a premium for several reasons: For one thing, they minimize the costs of labor and environmental impact mitigation.

Another factor is linked to how domestic steel markets operate in shipbreaking countries: Many South Asian breaking yards have effectively monopolized downstream industries. Often, the owner of a breaking yard will also own a mill for re-rolling the steel and a construction company for building structures with the recycled steel. For such entities, everything that happens after a ship lands on their shores is pure profit.

The chart below depicts the flow of end-of-life vessels from 2013 through 2022, from the country where they were last owned (but not necessarily registered) to where they were ultimately recycled. Many ships from countries that claim adherence to regulations regarding proper disposal of ships still wind up on beaches in India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, thanks to the gambits and loopholes outlined above.

“A lot of the pieces of the puzzle have to come together to see any substantial change,” says Nicola Mulinaris of the NGO Shipbreaking Platform. With a background in law, Mulinaris is well-positioned to acknowledge that shifting the global paradigm toward responsible ship recycling is an uphill battle. There are still several institutional and practical obstacles standing in the way.

A major hurdle is that the shipping industry still largely polices itself. The nations with the most influence within the International Maritime Organization (the United Nations agency responsible for regulating shipping) are those with the largest registered fleets. Thanks to flags of convenience, countries like Liberia, Panama, and the Marshall Islands enjoy significant representation within the IMO. Their advisors and observers are often foreign lawyers or lobbyists hired to advocate on behalf of the shipping industry.

Attempts to establish international legal frameworks are slow and halting. The IMO’s Hong Kong International Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships was adopted in 2009, but isn’t slated to go into effect for another couple of years. Moreover, according to Mulinaris, the Hong Kong Convention was essentially drafted by the shipping industry itself, and is intentionally riddled with loopholes; it doesn’t explicitly prohibit the practice of beaching, for instance, nor does it cover downstream waste management. And, as with the Basel Convention, the flag countries themselves are responsible for enforcement.

“It's like putting the fox in charge of the chickens," Mulinaris says. "Bangladesh and Pakistan and India are all going to say, ‘all our facilities are good, send your vessels here.'" Because the Hong Kong Convention carries the veneer of a respectable set of regulations, Mulinaris fears that it will effectively green-light the status quo while neutering previously established frameworks like the Basel Convention which, while far from perfect, provide broader and stricter protections.

[The Hong Kong Convention] is an instrument that’s doomed to fail and will simply be used to greenwash substandard practices. —Nicola Mulinaris

The number of end-of-life ships is expected to triple over the next decade, further compounding Mulinaris' concerns. Even if the will and the might were in place, proper ship dismantling facilities currently lack the capacity to meet anticipated demand.

Still, Mulinaris is encouraged by recent successes. He believes that the financial institutions and corporations that rely on shipping have the agency to drive change. Encouragingly, four major players in the fossil fuels industry — Shell, Total, SBM Offshore, and Petrobras — have recently committed to off-beach recycling for their end-of-life vessels.

Despite its limitations, international legislation shouldn’t be ignored, either. For example, the European Union already maintains a list of approved ship recycling facilities. Mulinaris believes market competition may drive other countries to raise their standards to secure EU approval.

In Turkey, this process has already begun. Turkey is currently the fourth most active shipbreaking country, after the three South Asian countries. While shipbreaking practices at Turkey’s primary Aliağa breaking yards still raise concerns, its geographic and political proximity to Europe allow for greater oversight and accountability, especially with accession to the EU still potentially on the table.

At the end of the day, merely raising awareness of the shipbreaking industry — and its human and environmental costs — is a small success in and of itself. Fortunately, groups like the NGO Shipbreaking Platform are fighting to do exactly that.

For these thankless advocates, each ship that is responsibly dismantled instead of ending up on a beach is a small victory. Their work won’t be finished until they can say that about every ship — and so, in all likelihood, their work will never be finished. But they’ll nonetheless tell you that it’s certainly worth doing.

The dashboard below features ten years of shipbreaking data collected by the NGO Shipbreaking Platform. The ships are positioned according to their country of dismantlement and sized according to their displacement. Use the drop-down menus to filter the visible ships by ownership country, flag country, or recycling country. Click or tap on the bar graph at the bottom to filter by year(s) or by recycling facility type (either on-beach or off-beach). Zoom in and click or tap on the dot for an individual ship to learn more about that ship.