{"id":38298,"date":"2022-05-03T00:05:31","date_gmt":"2022-05-03T07:05:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/?post_type=custom_features&p=38298"},"modified":"2022-12-20T11:33:06","modified_gmt":"2022-12-20T19:33:06","slug":"how-the-shipping-industry-sails-through-legal-loopholes","status":"publish","type":"custom_features","link":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/features\/how-the-shipping-industry-sails-through-legal-loopholes\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Shipping Industry Sails through Legal Loopholes"},"content":{"rendered":"

On December 16, 2018, the container ship Cecilie<\/em> left Mauritius for Dubai. Sailing from the tiny island nation in the Indian Ocean to the United Arab Emirates was a shift from the typical route it had traveled for 20 years while shuttling goods.<\/p>\n

The Cecilie<\/em> wasn\u2019t particularly big for its era, and it withers in comparison to today\u2019s largest ships. But it could still carry more than 11,000 tonnes of cargo\u2014equivalent to roughly 7,500 Honda Accords\u2014in thousands of metal containers, each as large as a small studio apartment. The ever-expanding carrying capacity of ships offered the Cecilie<\/em>\u2019s owner, AP Moller-Maersk A\/S of Denmark, economies of scale not possible with earlier ship designs. Three other Maersk ships of the same vintage\u2014the Clara<\/em>, the Thomas<\/em>, and the Claes<\/em>\u2014were about as large as the Cecilie<\/em>. All four had spent more than two decades plying the waters off Europe and the west coast of Africa, rarely calling at other ports after 2004.<\/p>\n

A week after the Cecilie<\/em> traveled to Dubai, the Thomas<\/em> arrived there from a Spanish port. The Clara<\/em> left Spain for Dubai next, followed by the Claes<\/em>. Shortly after those voyages, Maersk sold all four ships. Three went to companies known for scrapping ships on beaches in South Asia. The Claes<\/em> went to a company with two employees headquartered at an address in the Caribbean associated with shell companies, which companies that buy ships for scrapping are known to use. The movements and transactions are notable\u2014particularly the three ships\u2019 voyages from Spain\u2014because the European Union has a regulation that bars hazardous waste from leaving its ports for countries that are not members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Since ships contain toxic material, they qualify as hazardous waste under the European Union\u2019s Waste Shipment Regulation (WSR). Countries in the OECD, an intergovernmental group of 38 member countries around the world, generally have stronger environmental and labor standards than nonmembers.<\/p>\n

\"Maersk<\/a>

The Cecilie<\/em> was a cargo ship once owned by AP Moller-Maersk A\/S of Denmark. Photo by Archive PL\/Alamy Stock Photo<\/p><\/div>\n

But like hundreds of ships each year, the Cecilie<\/em>, the Clara<\/em>, the Thomas, <\/em>and the Claes<\/em> ended up in India, a non-OECD country, on a beach where workers dismantled them in dangerous conditions and with little regard for the hazardous materials they contained: cadmium, lead, asbestos, mercury, hydrocarbons from the burning of fuel, and residue oils. Hundreds of workers have died in shipbreaking yards in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh in recent years.<\/p>\n

Taking the Cecilie<\/em>, the Clara<\/em>, the Thomas<\/em>, and the Claes<\/em> to Dubai\u2014where only one of those ships had ever called, and only once\u2014raises questions. If Maersk decided to sell the ships once they were in Dubai, Spain could not enforce the waste shipment regulation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy did Maersk bring the ships to Dubai?\u201d asks Ingvild Jenssen, executive director of NGO Shipbreaking Platform, a Belgium-based nonprofit that monitors the disposal of ships worldwide and advocates for sustainable ship recycling. It\u2019s a question that vexes Jenssen. If a shipping company decides to dispose of a ship before it leaves the European Union, that would make the export a breach of the WSR.<\/p>\n

The unusual destination wasn\u2019t the only change in the ships\u2019 operations that alarmed Jenssen.<\/p>\n

On December 31, 2018, a new law took effect in the European Union: the Ship Recycling Regulation (SRR). It requires companies to scrap EU-registered ships in EU-approved facilities that maintain environmentally sound operations and ensure worker safety. Less than six months before the SRR took effect, Maersk reregistered the Danish ships in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n

The last voyages of the Cecilie<\/em>, the Clara<\/em>, the Thomas<\/em>, and the Claes\u2014<\/em>each with a new owner and reregistered yet again\u2014<\/em>were to a shipbreaking yard in Alang, India, where there are no EU-approved facilities.<\/p>\n

\"Broken<\/a>

The shipbreaking yard in Alang, India, is considered by many experts to be a subpar enterprise. Photo by Dinodia Photos\/Alamy Stock Photo<\/p><\/div>\n

By requiring EU-registered ships to be dismantled safely in an EU-approved facility, the SRR is meant to bolster the older, and ineffectual, waste shipment regulation. But if a company registers a ship outside the European Union just prior to dismantling\u2014a process that\u2019s cheap and easy\u2014it can evade the ship recycling regulation.<\/p>\n

Repeated requests for comment to Maersk senior press officer Christian Kj\u00e6rgaard-Winther went unanswered.<\/p>\n

The cases of the four Maersk ships are emblematic of a dark side of the globalized economy and the international shipping industry. Every day, nearly 100,000 container ships, oil and chemical tankers, vehicle carriers, and other vessels sail the oceans carrying the products we buy, the raw materials that go into manufacturing those products, and the fuels that power it all. The OECD reports that 90 percent of all goods are transported by ship. The ships themselves emit more than one million tonnes of carbon dioxide per day, more than twice that of the entire United Kingdom. Once they\u2019ve reached the end of their useful lives, more than 70 percent of ships of all types\u2014which includes not only cargo carriers and tankers but drilling platforms, cruise ships, tugs, and more\u2014end up in shipbreaking yards in India, Pakistan, or Bangladesh, according to analysis by NGO Shipbreaking Platform. (The ships that end up there tend to be among the bigger ones; they represent 90 percent of the discarded gross tonnage.) In 2021, the share of broken ships and offshore units heading to the three countries was 76 percent, representing close to the entire volume of gross tonnage scrapped worldwide. The yards are not EU-approved for safe dismantling under their ship recycling regulation. At least two yards, both in Alang, have applied for EU approval but were rejected.<\/p>\n