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I saw this link to a Foreign Policy photo essay, and thought that the photos were both too startling and amazing to ignore. Brendan Corr’s gorgeous images are all of a Bangladesh beach/port called Chittagong where half of the world’s supertankers are disassembled. The reported facts are pretty insane: that over 200,000 Bangladeshis are employed by the work, that most of the workers don’t have gloves or shoes and have to work extra-cautiously to avoid the razor-sharp metals and pollutants, and that the scrap metal stripped from these ships supplies 80 percent of Bangladesh’s steel. Anyway, I’ve posted a few below, but you can see more of the lush photos at Foreign Policy. Link thanks to ettf.
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Great example of the law of unintended consequences. We, as a nation, made our environmental laws more stringent in the 70’s so the ship breaking business dies in New Jersey and in other industrialized countries, but the environment is probably net worse now that the ship breaking business is done under 3rd world conditions.
posted by Robert on 9-26-2006 at 12:48 pm
I see Carnival Cruise Lines is updating their fleet. Kathy Lee Gifford will be so pleased to be working again.
posted by Sheldon Siegel on 9-26-2006 at 3:58 pm
The guys over at Google Sightseeing have a post about ship breaking, along with links to Google Maps images of beached ships on the shores of India & Bangladesh.
Gives a whole new meaning to a day at the beach. Sad.
posted by Dave on 9-28-2006 at 12:26 am
I first saw this in a BRILLIANT documentary: Workingman’s Death
Definitely worth watching!
posted by William Tully on 9-27-2007 at 1:05 pm