[HN Gopher] The toxic tide of ship breaking
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       The toxic tide of ship breaking
        
       Author : whalesalad
       Score  : 39 points
       Date   : 2023-02-23 01:11 UTC (21 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.chemistryworld.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.chemistryworld.com)
        
       | SoftTalker wrote:
       | Lots of video of these operations on YouTube. Some of it is shot
       | clandestinely because the ship breakers don't want the working
       | conditions to be public.
        
       | just_steve_h wrote:
       | The author Paolo Bacigalupi has a great sci-fi story set in the
       | Gulf Coast of the near future, centering on a teenage boy who
       | works as the titular Ship Breaker [1].
       | 
       | Even though it is technically "young adult" fiction, I found
       | plenty to enjoy for this middle-aged reader.
       | 
       | His novel The Water Knife is also excellent and more "grown up."
       | 
       | [1] https://windupstories.com/books/ship-breaker/
        
         | kristianp wrote:
         | I enjoyed ship breaker too. Didn't realise it was the first of
         | a trilogy. The windup girl was good too, although I found the
         | coal power and other steampunk stuff a little distracting.
        
       | jmclnx wrote:
       | Talk about a dystopian industry. Working conditions look very
       | bad.
       | 
       | And from the pics, the workers are all barefooted, they must get
       | lots of injuries from scrap metal all over the beach.
        
       | aziaziazi wrote:
       | Does anyone have reliable data on this ? The articles states
       | Alang ships breaking currently employed 15k people for 75% of
       | global market. En Wikipedia source [0] says 30% for 2020 and hope
       | for 60 in the future.
       | 
       | 0 https://m.economictimes.com/industry/transportation/shipping...
        
         | luhn wrote:
         | The article does _not_ state Alang breaks 75% of ships, it says
         | "about 75% of [ships] end up in one of the three beaches in
         | South Asia." Presumably these three beaches are Alang, India;
         | Gadani, Pakistan; and Chittagong, Bangladesh mentioned earlier
         | in the article.
        
           | aziaziazi wrote:
           | Didn't read wisely, thank to point this out.
        
       | Joe8Bit wrote:
       | I visited Chittagong a decade or so ago (as part of a non-profit
       | working with child workers) and I can only emphasise what a
       | visceral and horrifying thing this kind of ship breaking is to
       | witness. 10,000's of people (as young as 6/7) working 24/7 in
       | conditions that bear absolutely no respect for their health or
       | safety.
       | 
       | One of the most morally repugnant parts of the Western legal
       | system is the creation of the labyrinthine corporate structures
       | used to to protect the ship owners for any liability as part of
       | their ships being broken.
        
         | version_five wrote:
         | Is it more horrifying than them starving to death though or
         | doing some worse job? I agree the conditions sound horrible,
         | but it's still bringing jobs and money. Is making it illegal or
         | uneconomical going to result in a better quality of life for
         | the people that work there and their families?
        
           | rad_gruchalski wrote:
           | Right? Like those people in China who were so happy to break,
           | split, sort and burn the plastic waste we used to send them
           | back in the day. Why don't they want it anymore? They should
           | have been grateful. At least they had jobs. Otherwise who
           | knows what they would have been doing!
        
         | jpollock wrote:
         | By the time they're beached, they're not owned by a Western
         | company. They've been sold for scrap to the scrappers.
         | 
         | "right now, selling a vessel to a beaching facility would get
         | maybe $500 (PS371) per tonne."
         | 
         | https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/the-toxic-tide-of-sh...
        
       | metadat wrote:
       | You can actually see it on Google Earth if you put in the
       | coordinates for the city of Alang in the Gulf of Khambhat:
       | 21deg23'37"N 72deg10'40"E
       | 
       | It's an enormous operation, and there is a large trauma medical
       | center nearby. Also, the Gulf of Khambhat is a remarkably
       | disgusting shade of brown.
       | 
       | https://goo.gl/maps/Tk2sqMP6aHFVME1BA (warning: Maps is not as
       | good as Google Earth view, especially on mobile)
       | 
       | > even the asbestos will be resold
       | 
       | This is a surprise. Who's in the market for some second hand
       | asbestos?
        
         | greenmana wrote:
         | From what it looks like that's some ten kilometers or 6,2 miles
         | of scrapping beach, crazy.
        
         | hummus_bae wrote:
         | [dead]
        
         | literalAardvark wrote:
         | They're probably putting it in climbing chalk or something.
        
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       (page generated 2023-02-23 23:00 UTC)