Green Ships: Alternative Solutions

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Mothballing

Mothballing, a potential alternative to ship-breaking, is the practice of indefinitely storing a partially or fully decommissioned ship. The vessels are fully equipped for service, but are not currently needed. A negative aspect of mothballing is the expense required for ship upkeep. Likewise, the mothballing process may cause forms of environmental harm.[1]

Dry Docking

Information could use updating Another alternative to ship-recycling is dry docking. Dry docking is closely related to mothballing in terms of process, potential environmental harm, and high cost ($800,000 per vessel).[1] Ships are dry docked in shipyards and harbors; these locations demand high quality waste management due to the particularly high risk associated with polluting water bodies in these places.[2] The decommissioned ships can also be sunk to form artificial reefs, although this option is costly due to the need for the removal of all environmental hazards prior to sinking.[1]

Relocate Toxic Sediments

In an attempt to completely remove the contaminated sediments, that for many years since the banning of TBT are still present, the solution of removing the sediment altogether has been suggested. The preferred method is to relocate the toxic sediments. (Stichnothe) This solution would be extensively difficult to collect the entire contaminated sediment as well as searching or creating a site to relocate the material and how to disintegrate the sediment in a environmentally safe procedure.

Electrochemical Process

The more recent alternative solution to ship-recycling has turned to an electrochemical process. The aim of the electrochemical process is to decompose TBT. (Stichnothe). Rather than risk removing the sediment and possibly endangering or contaminating other locations in the process and/or preserving the contaminated ships, the electrochemical process seeks to eliminate the toxins where they are present.

Scraping

As an initial solution, in response to the TBT based anti-fouling paints applied on the majority of vessels, scraping the ship's hull to remove the paint was proposed. Washing, scraping, and repainting of boat hulls may also cause harmful health effects on shipyard workers. (Gipperth). The idea of scraping was a rapid response to the banning of TBT, in light of the extreme marine and environmental concerns, without further thoughts or investigation on the damaging environmental consequences as a results of scraping.

Alternate Paints

The accelerated popularity on the use of applying TBT based anti-fouling paints was largely due to the dramatic economic benefits created from the TBT paint. The economic benefits included less organisms attached to the ship's hull which allowed faster and increased movement of the ship, in turn decreasing the amount of fuel dumped into the ships eluding to the environmental benefits of less greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, the TBT paints required less re-painting than other paints, allowing the ship owners to increase their profit by maximizing the ships initial painting. Owners could use other paints, however, most still contain a biocide which makes it ineffective. Also, the cost of using other compounds or metals is considerably more expensive. (Gipperth). Ironically, the TBT based paints were also very expensive during its first revealing, though that did not discourage ship owners to apply the paint to their ships. The higher cost of using alternative paints is not only due to high cost of paint itself but less effective antifouling paint requires more frequent repainting and hull cleanings and may increase fuel consumption, followed by loss in trading revenue while ships are dry-docked. (Gipperth)

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 Dodds, D. (2007). Breaking Up is Hard to Do: Environmental Effects of Shipwrecking and Possible Solutions Under India’s Environmental Regime. 20 Pac. McGeorge Global Bus. and Dev. L.J., 207, 208-236.
  2. Gipperth, L. (2009). The legal design of the international and European Union ban on tributyltin antifouling paint: Direct and indirect effects. Journal of Environmental Management, 90, S86-S95.