TRANSPARENT SHIP RECYCLING
Conducting business in a legal, ethical and socially responsible manner is core to NORDEN. What is also core to NORDEN, is operating a modern fleet, selling and redelivering vessels long before their end-of-life, which also means the company has not recycled a vessel since 1928.
Nonetheless, should the company face a situation where this should become necessary, the standards for doing so would be high. To encourage others to have equally high standards and in general promote transparency in the industry of responsible ship recycling, NORDEN is a founding member of the international Ship Recycling Transparency Initiative (SRTI).
“While we do not have recent experience with recycling, and therefore do not have every detail of the process planned, we believe in taking a stand – and taking responsibility – should the situation arise in the future,” says CEO Jan Rindbo.
Creating a level playing field
While there are already several regulations across various conventions, the SRTI group believes there are no effective global regulations in force to ensure a full and consistent approach to ship recycling. “We’re facing the challenge of an uneven playing field due to different – and often undefined – approaches to ship recycling. Responsible ship recycling does not always get rewarded, while bad practice can go unchecked,” says Andrew Stephens, Executive Director, SRTI.
“The risks associated with ship recycling are well documented, including environmental, occupational health and safety risks and community health and safety exposure, not to mention the risk of poor social standards pertaining to lack of access to appropriate health care, wages, working hours, collective bargaining and freedom of association.” The focus of the SRTI is thereby to accelerate a voluntary market-driven approach to responsible ship recycling practices through transparency, and subsequently to influence and improve
the decision-making about ship recycling, creating an industry-wide level playing field. The organization operates as an independent data convener and reporting mechanism by way of an online platform for shipowners to voluntarily disclose their policies and practices
against a set of predefined ship recycling disclosure criteria, which also allows for improved reporting.
NORDEN is adopting several initiatives to support the SRTI, among others regarding the sale of owned vessels and the return of chartered vessels, which are past a certain date.
“As a member of the SRTI Steering Group, NORDEN has provided us with important inputs throughout the SRTI development process, including the development of disclosure criteria for shipowners’ data on ship recycling. While it may not have the extensive recycling experience of other larger shipowners, NORDEN has shown that any shipowner can be proactive and transparent about what is being done
with their ships as they approach the end of their useful life. A critical mass of shipowners sharing information through the SRTI online platform will shift the current industry narrative on ship recycling,” adds Andrew Stephens.
What is ship recycling?
Ship recycling is the process of dismantling the ship that happens at the end of its life, including all associated operations such as mooring, dismantling, recovery of materials and reprocessing.
