New rules may not change the recycling business of dirt and deadly ships

Mizan Hossein fell 10 meters (33 feet) from the top of the ship that was cutting at Chittagong Beach, Bangladesh. Most of the world’s maritime giants met at their end.

He survived, but his back was crushed. “I can’t wake up in the morning,” said the 31-year-old, who has a wife, three children and his parents.

“We eat one meal in two, but I never get out of my situation,” he said, his hands swelled under the deep wounds on his right arm.

The shipyard where Hossain worked without a harness was not compliant with international safety and environmental standards.

Hossein mows the boat on the sand without proper protection or insurance as he was a child. Many men in his village are several kilometers inland from a huge beach boat.

One of his neighbors crushed his toes in another garden shortly before AFP visited Chittagong in February.

The shipbuilding yard employs 20,000-30,000 people, directly or indirectly, in the vast ports of the Bay of Bengal. But the industry’s human and environmental costs are also immeasurable, experts say.

The Hong Kong Treaty on recycling ships, aimed at regulating one of the world’s most dangerous industries, is expected to come into effect on June 26th.

However, many people question whether regulations regarding the disposal of toxic waste and protecting workers are sufficient or whether they will be properly implemented.

Only seven of Chittagong’s 30 yards meet new regulations that will equip workers with helmets, harnesses and other protections, decontaminate asbestos and other contaminants, and store hazardous waste.

There are no official deaths

According to the NGO Coalition Shipbreaking Platform, Chittagong was the final destination of nearly a third of the 409 ships that were globally demolished last year. Most others ended in India, Pakistan, or Türkiye.

However, Bangladesh has taken away the best price to buy terminal ships due to extremely low labor costs, leading up to the Asian Neurological Centres of Maritime Commercial across the world, with a minimum monthly wage of around $133 (115 Euros).

Chittagong’s 25-kilometer beach is the world’s largest ship cemetery. Huge chunks of oil tankers and gas carriers lie in the mud under the burnt sun, and the troops of workers slowly separate the pieces with a torch of oxyacetylene.

“When I first started (in the 2000s), it was extremely dangerous,” said Muhammad Ali, a rich union leader who worked for a long time without demolishing ships on the sand.

“Accidents were frequent, with regular deaths and injuries.”

He remained incapacitated for months after being hit by a piece of metal. “When an accident occurs, you’re either dead or disabled,” said the 48-year-old.

According to a shipbuilding platform NGO, at least 470 workers have been killed since 2009, and 512 have been seriously injured in ship necrotic yards in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan for the first time since 2009.

Chittagong does not have official deaths stored. However, between 2018 and 2022 workers died in yards a year, according to a count held by Muhammad Ali Sahin, the founder of the Workers’ Support Centre.

He said there have been improvements in recent years, especially after Dhaka ratified the Hong Kong Convention in 2023, Sahin said.

However, seven workers still died last year, and he said significant progress is needed.

The industry has also been accused of causing serious environmental damage, especially for mangroves, with oil and heavy metals fleeing the beaches to the sea. Asbestos, which is not illegal in Bangladesh, is also dumped in outdoor landfills.

A 2024 study by the Journal of Hazardous Materials found that vessel necrosis also condemns unusually high levels of arsenic and other metalloids in the area’s soil, rice and vegetables.

“We need to share responsibility.”

The region’s most modern garden, PHP is one of the few Chittagongs that meets new standards.

Criticism of Bangladesh Yard’s pollution and working conditions plagues Managing Director Mohamed Zahirul Islam.

“We are South Asians, we have dark skin, and we can’t do better in the fields?” he told AFP.

“Ships are being built in developed countries… and then Europeans and Westerners use them for 20 or 30 years and get them for four months (finally).

“But it’s all our fault,” he said, as helmet workers, their faces were protected by plastic visors to protect them from metal debris, and demolished Japanese gas carriers on concrete platforms near the coast.

“Everyone involved in this whole cycle should have a common responsibility,” he added.

His garden also has modern cranes and flower beds, but the workers are in Europe and are not hidden to protect them from inhaling metal dust and smoke.

However, modern yards to meet the new standards are expensive, and PHP is spending $10 million to raise the game.

In a sector that is in crisis, investors are reluctant to Bangladesh after half of the ships have been sent for scrap since the pandemic, and after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina tumultuous in August.

Chittagong does not yet have facilities to treat or store dangerous materials collected from ships.

PHP wraps the asbestos extracted into cement and stores it in a dedicated room on site. “I think we have about six to seven years of storage capacity,” said Liton Mamudzer, the expert.

However, shipbuilding platforms and NGOs like Robin de Bois are skeptical of how feasible this is, with some ships containing a large amount of asbestos scores.

Walton Pantland of the Global Union Industriall also questioned whether Hong Kong standards would be maintained once the yards are certified.

In fact, six workers were killed in September in the explosion at SN Corporation’s Chittagong Yard. This was in conventional compliance.

Shipbraking Platform said even Hong Kong regulations are a symptom of Bangladesh’s lack of proper “regulation, supervision and workers’ protection.”

“Toxic” Trojan horse

NGO Director Ingvild Jenssen said the shipowners are using the Hong Kong treaty to bypass the Basel treaty.

She accused them of using it to use convenience and intermediary flags to cheaply load off a toxic ship in South Asia Yard without fear of indictment.

In contrast, European shipowners must dismantle ships or raise European flags based on the continent under extremely strict ship recycling regulations (SRR).

At the Belgian shipbuilding yard galoo near the Ghent-Tern Ozen Canal, demolition chief Peter Wintin told AFP how the ship will be broken down into “50 different materials” that are recycled.

Everything is mechanized, with only five or six workers wearing helmets, visors and masks filtering the air, actually destroying it in a pile of scrap metal.

Wind turbines provide electricity, and nets gather everything that falls into the canal. Garo also used activated charcoal and bacterial filters to submerge 10 million euros into water treatment.

But Wintin said it is struggling to survive in some European yards that were forced to close European yards as EU-certified Turks take much of their business.

He argued that while EU shipbreakers have “compliance with 25,000 pages of law,” the Aliga people on the west coast of Turkey have only a 25 page rule to respect that they are “compliant with the Third Country under the SRR.”

Winting is deeply concerned that the Hong Kong Convention will further undermine the standards and European yards with them.

“We can certify yards from Türkiye and Asian, but still include the beach,” the ship will be demolished directly on the coast. “And beaches are a process that we never accept in Europe,” he insisted.

Illegal dump

Officials from the Turkish Safety and Health Authority have reported eight deaths in a sailor yard in Aliga near Izmir since 2020. It specializes in dismantling cruise ships.

“If anything fatal, the work inspector will arrive soon and risk being shut down,” Wintin told AFP.

In April, Garoo lost a bid to recycle a 13,000 tonne Italian ferry with 400 tonnes of asbestos to Turkish yards, Wintin said.

However, in May, the Ariga Local Council said, “Hard waste is stored in an environmentally harmful way and sometimes only covered with soil.”

“It is estimated that 15,000 tons of hazardous waste are scattered throughout the area, putting human and environmental health at risk due to illegal storage methods,” he posted a photo of the illegal dump in X.

In Bangladesh, Human Rights Watch and shipbuilding platforms report that “toxic substances from ships containing asbestos” can be “resold in second-hand markets.”

At Chittagong, everything is recycled.

The roads along the beach are filled with shops with furniture, toilets, generators and stairs photographed directly from the Hulk pulled up on the beach just a few metres away.

Not too far, Rekha Actor lamented her husband. She is one of those who died in an explosion in the SN Corporation yard in September. A safe supervisor, his lungs were burned in an explosion.

Without his salary, she and their two young children are “being blamed for living in poverty. That’s our destiny,” the young widow said.

©2025 AFP