Notas del episodio
Cargo ships and tankers last about 25 to 30 years before metal fatigue and saltwater corrosion make them uneconomical, and at the end they are broken for steel. Wooden Tudor ships were simply dismantled or burned, but by the 1880s the United States and United Kingdom dominated metal shipbreaking with electric shears and oxyacetylene torches. After World War II the work chased cheap labor to Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, where the port of Kaohsiung broke 220 ships, about 1.6 million tons, in 1972 alone. By the late 1980s it moved to South Asia, and today over 90 percent of tonnage is demolished in Asia, led by Alang in India with about 30 percent of the market, Chittagong in Bangladesh, and Gadani in Pakistan.
South Asian yards drive ships onto tidal mudflats at the highest tide and cut them apart by hand, while European and American yards work in sealed dry docks where asbestos is wrapped for landfill and PCBs are destroyed by pyrolysis or bound in cement kilns. Beaching yards pay up to $400 a ton, thanks to labor at four to six dollars a day, cheaper asbestos disposal, and hull plates re-rolled directly into construction steel. Watchdogs in Bangladesh report roughly one worker death a week, and 20 percent of the workforce there is under 15. The Hong Kong Convention, adopted in 2009, enters force in June 2025, and about 110 of Alang's 120 yards hold statements of compliance, yet the stricter EU Ship Recycling Regulation still leaves them off its approved list.
- A Victorian liner had the last letter of its name chiseled off before heading to the breakers.
- Luxury cruise ships were quietly sold for scrap during the 2020 pandemic.
- Ship scrap supplies 20 percent of Bangladesh's steel and nearly 10 percent of India's.
- Recycling a ton of ship steel saves 1.1 tons of iron ore and cuts emissions by 58 percent compared with primary steel.
- Owners dodge EU rules by swapping a ship's flag weeks before its final sale.