A Shipbreaking Story
Ship Breaking is an industry that is dedicated to breaking down ships that have reached the end of their working lives. Companies buy these ships and send them to yards to be broken down by contract labourers, this creates many jobs for unskilled workers. Once the ship is broken down its parts are recycled, from the steel, the furniture inside and even generators that could power whole villages!
Reason to break a ship depends on:
• market supply of new ships
• demand for shipping in the global supply chain
• cost of maintaining the ships
• market for second-hand ships
• market supply of new ships
• demand for shipping in the global supply chain
• cost of maintaining the ships
• market for second-hand ships
At first glance this seems like a great industry, creating jobs and making use of ships that are no longer of use, but there is much more to the story.
Above there is a web outlining the shipbreaking industry. It is broken into three categories, economic, environmental and ethical. It displays the factors that go into, or come out of ship breaking, broken down into these categories and connected where appropriate. As you can see from this web, there are some benefits to shipbreaking. The benefits are shown here as economic, with high profits and recycling. However there are a lot more downfalls to the industry as it is currently running. Environmental concerns with pollution and ethical issues with unfair and unsafe treatment of workers. To see some of these skip right to The Who.