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Ship Recycling, Ship Dismantling
Ship Recycling

The ships normally have few decades of lifespan after which they become unfit for use and come to a stage when their repairing also becomes uneconomical. Such kind of unusable ships are usually demolished and their parts are recycled for further use. This process of dismantling of ships for scrapping is usually called ship recycling or ship breaking. The ship demolition activity is usually conducted at a beach, pier, dry dock or dismantling slip. It includes a wide range of activities, from removing all gear and equipment to cutting down and recycling the ship’s infrastructure. The process of dismantling ships for disposal is normally done at ship recycling yard often located in the areas where there is high tidal gradient. The tidal gradient enables the ship to beach right at the shore during high tide and when the tide recedes the ship stands almost at the dry-dock thus making the work easier for the ship recyclers.

Advantages of Ship Recycling

Ship recycling as an activity offers a number of advantages. The processing of old, zero value ships offers number of financial benefits to shipping industry. The incapable vessels usually incur expenses like port charges, crew salaries and oil consumption cost, thus becoming a maritime burden to the shipping companies. Through recycling this unnecessary ship traffic can be taken off from the shoulders of shipping industry in a safer and economical way. Through eco-friendly ship recycling huge quantities of re-rolled steel can be produced without exploiting the natural resources, thus providing useful raw materials to re-rolling mills while saving the natural non-replenishable resources. The steel and useful material produced through process can be used for recovery of several kinds of goods like household accessories and valuable machineries that are often sold at very cheap prices. Apart from this number of employment opportunities are also being generated with the rapid development of ship recycling industry. Several business opportunities to shipping agents, cash buyers, ship brokers, marine traders and brokers, transporters etc are generated by the ship-recycling industry. Like the benefits there are also some disadvantages of the process. The process generates harmful wastes like asbestos, oily sludge, toxic paint chips etc that are very hazardous to both human health and environment. Therefore the appropriate safety measures are often employed at the yards to ensure the safety of the workers and safe disposal of wastes in the environment to avoid any kind of pollution.

One of the largest ship recycling activities in world takes place ship recycling yard in India located at Alang in Bhavangar, Gujarat. It is one of the largest ship recycling yards in the world where all kinds of vessel breaking, dismantling, scrapping processes are taken into account through eco-friendly procedures.