[HN Gopher] The toxic tide of ship breaking ___________________________________________________________________ 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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-02-23 23:00 UTC)