EU & REST OF THE WORLD

AMERICA

In North America and the Caribbean, there are several recycling yards located in the US, Canada, Mexico and Puerto Rico. There are also facilities in Ecuador and Curaçao, however these remain for the time being inactive. In the US, ship recycling yards have primarily focused on the domestic inventory of obsolete navy vessels, but the current United States Maritime Administration (MARAD) and navy inventory will likely be disposed of soon. This opens up significant capacity for foreign flagged ships seeking environmentally sound and safe recycling. The yards are located on all three coastlines of the U.S., with facilities in Brownsville, Texas, being the most active. Ship dismantling operations in the U.S. are either conducted in graving dry-docks or alongside with slipways. One U.S. yard has made it on the EU List. In Canada, the industry currently predominantly dismantles government-owned vessels as well as smaller vessels in the Great Lakes area. Most of these yards have un-utilised capacity which could be used to also recycled the international commercial fleet. In Mexico, only in recent years has the industry been revived with the development of yards capable of dismantling medium or large sea-going vessels on both the Gulf Coast and the Pacific Coast. The environmental standards, including downstream hazardous waste management, should however be scrutinized by any ship owner seeking to cooperate with one of these yards, such as Dutch ship owner Boskalis when they partnered with a Mexican yard in 2013.