Barcelona /Amsterdam: Activists from Greenpeace and the Basel
Action Network (BAN) today demonstrated in Barcelona against the
shipping industries practice of dumping toxic waste in developing
countries.
At 9h00 am, six activists from the Greenpeace vessel MV Sirius
climbed on the Encounter Bay, a ship due to be demolished in Asia
in the coming months, and hanged a banner reading \"Stop dumping on
Asia\".
\"Old ships contain toxic materials. To sell these ships for
demolition to a developing country without cleaning them first is
not only morally wrong, it is also a clear violation of
international agreements and European law that all EU countries
have signed\", said Juantxo Lopez de Uralde of Greenpeace.
The owner of Encounter Bay, Dutch-British P&O Nedlloyd, has
sold seven ships that had reached the end of their life span, for
demolition in India, Bangladesh and China since March this year,
including two sister ships of the Encounter Bay. The ships are
scrapped in crude working conditions and any useful material is
sold for recycling.
\"The ships reaching the end of their life span during the next
20 years all contain hazardous substances like asbestos, lead
paints, heavy metals and PCBs. These hazardous substances should be
removed from the ships before the actual scrapping.
The removal is a dirty and dangerous work. If it has to happen,
it should be conducted only under the strictest safety standards\",
said Andreas Bernstorff of Greenpeace, who witnessed and documented
the situation in India last month.
Ships-for-scrap, unless cleaned of hazardous substances are
\'contaminated metal scrap\' and therefore subject to the Basel
Convention which controls the transboundary movements of hazardous
wastes and their disposal. The export of hazardous waste from
OECD-countries to non-OECD countries is banned under the
convention. The ban entered into force January this year in
EU-countries.
\"We already have a difficult job at hand to make labour
conditions at shipbreaking sites in South Asia safe. Hazardous
wastes on ships make this task an impossible one. We demand that
all European countries and companies take responsibility for
removing all hazardous wastes on ships before they are readied for
scrapping,\" said Ravi Agarwal of BAN in India.
In Alang (India), the world\'s largest scrapping site for ocean
going ships, it is normal practice to remove the carcinogenic
asbestos with bare hands and without any breathing protection.
Workers torchcut steel covered with centimetre thick paint layers,
without protection against the fumes containing heavy metals. A
large part of the toxics also ends up in the sea and in the
agricultural hinterland.
Greenpeace and BAN demand that P&O Nedlloyd and all other
EU-based ship owners remove all hazards before exporting ships for
demolition in Asia. The organisations also call for an independent
toxics inventory of all ships owned by EU-based companies that are
planned to be sold for scrapping in Asian countries.
For more information:Manu Gopalan, Toxics Campaigner -
9811608036
Email id: 
For more information:Ganesh Nochur, Campaigner -
080-51154861
Email id: 