Tag: circularity

Platform News – Ship Recycling Lab 2026 | Transformation Through Innovation. Clean and circular ship recycling moves from showcase to scale

Posted on by Nicola Mulinaris

Over 100 participants from across the globe, including recyclers, shipowners, shipyards, steel producers, financiers, policymakers, researchers and NGOs, gathered at La Friche la Belle de Mai in Marseille on 14–15 October for the NGO Shipbreaking Platform's 3rd edition of the Ship Recycling Lab, its biennial flagship event. The Lab set out to prove that safe and clean recycling of end-of-life ships is not a niche experiment but an industrial reality.

This was no routine industry gathering, as Helen Perivier, President of the Board of Directors of the NGO Shipbreaking Platform, said that "this may be the most important Lab yet as we risk losing the EU as an ally in the quest for sustainable ship recycling." Breaking ships on tidal mudflats is not only environmentally devastating, it is economically unnecessary. The solutions already exist. What is missing is political will to accompany the scaling of sustainable capacity and commitment from the shipping sector to use it. 

Circularity gains momentum

 

Oppsirk, a cross-sector and viable economic model for circular ship recycling, that got its momentum during the previous Lab editions, received significant interest among participants. With upcycling, steel retains its original properties for direct reuse without heavy industrial processing, yielding up to ten times more value than recycled scrap and emitting up to 97% less greenhouse gases. 

Reused steel has already been successfully used in several construction projects in Norway thanks to the successful collaboration between AF Decom and Nordic Circles. However, the sector needs a more stable flow of end-of-life vessels. "We are waiting for shipowners to enter the chat," said John Jacobsen from Nordic Circles. The session reframed end-of-life ships as strategic assets, "literal metal mines of the future", as Johannes Thrane from AF Decom framed them, where critical raw materials such as manganese, now scarce due to supply chain disruptions, or nickel-rich steel from LNG tankers will soon make responsible recycling a matter of necessity.

The innovators take the spotlight

 

Innovations were the core topic of this Ship Recycling Lab, and the Tech Slam Session gave the floor to disruptors ready to take ship recycling to the next level. TNO showed how steel can be reused and its value preserved through material information, Bawat presented their ballast water stream, often an overlooked hazardous waste processing, where heat neutralises both contaminants and invasive species, SHEREC brought robotics and AI to the yard, improving hull-cutting efficiency and worker safety, with 3D scans complementing the mandatory Inventory of Hazardous Materials, and RemoraDocks set out to connect buyers and sellers of onboard equipment before it becomes waste.

The Lab also showcased the Circles of Life Ship Material Passport (SMP) and Shipyard Environmental Performance Index (SEPI), presented by Martin Verboom, Renaud Gaudel and Nour Abu Muheisen (Damen). The discussion centred on whether we need more bureaucracy to achieve a more circular industry, and how passports can be implemented in a way that creates value without adding administrative burden. Now at the end of their development phase, these digital passports enhance sustainability and value retention across a vessel's lifecycle, and since reuse, not recycling, is the goal, up-to-date and accessible information on ship components will be crucial to further advance circularity in the maritime sector. 

More than 50% of the information a material passport requires is already available. The challenge is making better use of existing data, avoiding duplication, and sharing it efficiently across the value chain. The passports can also offer benefits beyond sustainability reporting, keeping information on valuable assets, materials, and components, contributing to material recovery at the end of vessels’ operations. The practicality of the tools was demonstrated with the example of Damen’s Circular Crew Cabin, showcasing the concept put into practice. 

CirclesOfLife engages with classification societies to explore how the documents can be maintained and updated over time, ensuring valuable information stays accessible and relevant from build to dismantling. Recognising that this understanding is not yet shared across the whole value chain, the partners fully support the EU Industrial Maritime Value Alliance and its ambition to bring the maritime chain together. 

Europe and beyond

 

What is needed to increase sustainable capacities? Scaling up technologies, cutting automation, material traceability. The projects must also be “bankable and investable”, as pointed out by Antidia Citores from Green Marine Europe. End-of-life vessels can provide premium E3 steel, yet European yards operate under their capacities. Europe is projected to become scrap importer by 2030. Without strategic commitment, European-owned assets will continue sailing away to third markets. 

The European Union aims for circularity and decarbonisation, while strengthening its industrial resilience and strategic autonomy. Nevertheless, the European Commission provisionally greenlights two Indian beaching yards, which sparked a heated debate. The Commission defended its decision, while most participants criticised the move over the lack of a level playing field, discrepancies in the inspection reports, and its apparent contradiction of the EU Clean Industrial Deal, Industrial Maritime Strategy and the upcoming Circular Economy Act. 

Cross-stakeholder collaborations, like between Petrobras, Gerdau, and Porto do Açu in Brazil, or floating dry-docks, developed by Elegant Exit Company, already lead the way in emerging ship recycling hubs in other parts of the world.

Where are shipowners?

 

The standards, technologies and business cases already exist. Emissions trading revenues could be directed into sustainable recycling of assets, giving shipowners a financial reason to retire and recycle vessels responsibly rather than at the lowest cost. The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism is already impactful. Being included in imported goods prices, it can be avoided by keeping steel in Europe, turning responsible recycling from a compliance cost into a competitive advantage. The oil and gas sector offers a solution worth copying, setting money aside for decommissioning before assets reach their end of life. Could shipping do the same? 

What has been missing is the willingness to treat end-of-life ships as a managed, financed and regulated responsibility. This reality will not be successful without a stable and predictable regulatory framework. As decarbonisation of the maritime industry becomes key, responsible recycling of maritime assets must be fully taken into equation. 

"The third Ship Recycling Lab shows clearly that once breakthrough technologies are now in use. What we need is clear decisions from policymakers to scale up these solutions, and a stable flow of end-of-life ships. There is a value chain ready for safe and circular recycling of vessels off the beach. Shipowners are the only missing link."
Ingvild Jenssen - Executive Director and Founder - NGO Shipbreaking Platform

The way forward

 

Shipowners should commit to selling end-of-life vessels only to responsible facilities and to planning for recycling from the design stage rather than the dismantling stage. The EU should fully implement circularity, decarbonisation and strategic material autonomy pledges across the policy environment, enforce the Environmental Crime Directive, and anchor ship recycling in the Circular Economy Act and the Steel and Metals action plan. Finance should treat responsible recycling as a bankable, investable asset class, using instruments such as return schemes or tonnage tax. Policymakers should support a more diversified map of recycling capacity, so that safe and clean dismantling becomes the norm in emerging hubs rather than an exception to the South Asian concentration. 

 

See you at the Ship Recycling Lab 2028! 

Press Release – EUROFER, Recycling Europe and the NGO Shipbreaking Platform urge the EU to put a stop to the double standards in the shipbreaking sector

Posted on by Nicola Mulinaris

As the European Commission is currently working on reviewing technical guidance for third-country shipbreaking facilities, the NGO Shipbreaking Platform, EUROFER and Recycling Europe call for a clear ban of beaching and landing methods and the guarantee of a real level playing field for the ship recycling sector.

 

 

GALLOO ship recycling yard, Ghent, Belgium

 

Following our initial joint statement calling to boost ship recycling capacity in the EU, we welcome the European Commission’s initiative to review the technical guidelines for ship recycling yards located in third countries. Acting as an interpretation of the EU Ship Recycling Regulation, these guidelines are used by auditors to inspect and authorise ship recycling yards located in third countries to recycle EU-flagged vessels and ensure yards’ compliance. Their revision represents a key opportunity to fix the double standards embedded in the EU Ship Recycling Regulation’s current implementation.

 

In particular, we suggest the following improvements to guarantee a level playing field for ship recyclers in the EU and in third countries: 

 

- The guidelines must clearly ban beaching and landing as dismantling methods and only authorise dismantling in facilities ensuring full containment. 

 

- Ship recycling facilities in third countries should be obliged to acquire authorisations and permits needed for inclusion in the European list that are equivalent to the ones required in the EU, such as the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and operational permits clearly defining yards’ conditions and activities (1). Currently in Turkey, despite its high-risk profile, the shipbreaking sector is exempt from the Environmental Permit and Licence Regulation and EIA procedures. The lack of a clear legal framework and weak monitoring schemes in third countries, compared to those applicable to ship recycling yards in the EU, leads to many of the operational problems observed on the ground and reported by EU inspectors, including poor waste management and unsafe working conditions in both Turkey and India. 

 

- A clear timeframe for inclusion or removal of ship recycling yards must be established, including a procedure for provisional suspension of non-compliant yards.

 

- Obligations to shipowners or states coming from other regulations, such as the Basel Convention, should be included in the guidelines.

 

- The Commission’s assessment of third countries yards should also cover facilities receiving and processing secondary raw materials from these yards, including steel processing installations (2). Such facilities should apply appropriate emission control measures and operate at a level of environmental performance considered equivalent to EU standards.

 

Acknowledging the constant serious problems occurring namely in yards located in Aliağa, Turkey, together with Turkish civil society organisations, we reiterate the call to remove Turkish facilities from the EU List until necessary improvements are properly implemented. The current situation not only puts the environment and workers’ health at risk but also undermines the very objective of the List to act as the role model for best practices for the ship recycling sector. Lack of proper environmental permitting and monitoring framework in the country’s shipbreaking sector cannot be ignored by EU decision-makers anymore.

 

“The current situation, where permitting and monitoring frameworks differ between EU/EFTA Member States and third countries, are the reason why double standards persist in the shipbreaking sector. European waste, wastewater, emissions and pollution rules, as well as safety standards, should serve as the benchmark against which all ship recycling facilities in third countries are assessed, in order to ensure that no EU-flagged vessel is dismantled in substandard yards.” – Ingvild Jenssen, Executive Director, NGO Shipbreaking Platform

 

“The update of the technical guidance note is a crucial opportunity to level the playing field between third country and EU yards and put an end to persistent double standards. Recycling Europe calls on the Commission to seize this opportunity and send a strong signal in support of the European ship recycling sector, while helping raise global ship recycling standards.” – Isabelle Radovan, Policy Advisor, Recycling Europe

 

“In addition to making sure that European and third country yards operate by the same rules and standards, the Guidance document should also further strengthen the ESM equivalence applicable to downstream facilities, including steel rerollers and processing installations. Such an approach would also help ensure consistency of EU environmental policy and keep up with the ambitions of the Waste Shipment Regulation” - Aurelio Braconi, Director for Stainless and Specialty Steels and Raw Materials, Eurofer

 

The EU should continue its efforts to raise global standards in ship recycling by clearly defining rules that reflect the Union’s very own pledges to only authorise best available techniques ensuring safe and environmentally sound recycling of vessels. This ambitious mission will fail if we don't ensure that practices that would never be allowed in the EU, such as beaching or landing, are accepted on the European list.

 

You can access the Press Release document here.

NOTES

 

(1) According to the Directive 2011/92/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 December 2011 on the assessment of the effects of certain public and private projects on the environment, Environmental Impact Assessment procedure is mandatory for projects likely to have a significant impact on the environment.

 

(2) This secondary raw material mainly consists of ferrous scrap reprocessed by ship recycling facilities.

Press Release – The EU Circular Economy Act risks missing the boat on ship recycling and true circularity

Posted on by Nicola Mulinaris

On Thursday 30/04, the final stakeholder workshop on the European Commission's impact assessment for the Circular Economy Act (CEA) held. NGO Shipbreaking Platform is concerned that the current proposal risks squandering one of Europe's most significant untapped material banks, end-of-life ships, and with it, a concrete opportunity for steel decarbonisation and material resilience.

 

NAVALEO - Les Recycleurs Bretons ship recycling yard, Brest, France

 

The CEA is expected to build a Single Market for secondary raw materials and stimulate demand for high-quality recycled content. Yet, without unlocking new material streams such as ship recycling, it will fall short its objectives. 

Why does ship recycling matter?

 

- Scale of the opportunity: the Platform's research shows that EU/EFTA-owned ships could supply up to 12 million tonnes of high-quality steel scrap per year to the European economy over the next decade;

- Material recovery: up to 95% of a ship's weight can be recovered as high-quality scrap, representing a major secondary raw material stream for the EU steel industry, and leading to the sector's decarbonisation;

- The EU stake: companies based in the EU and EFTA own about one-third of the world's fleet, placing Europe in a pivotal position to lead the transition.

The workshop revealed a critical blind spot of the proposed Act. The impact assessment focused almost exclusively on waste management measures: extensions to the WEEE Directive, construction and demolition waste, and harmonisation of End-of-Waste and EPR schemes. Higher levels of the circularity hierarchy, prevention, reuse, repair and refurbishment, were largely absent.

Primary focus on waste narrows down the Circular Economy Act simply to the waste management legislation, neglecting the very need of addressing material use throughout their lifecycle before they become a waste.

NGO Shipbreaking Platform finds the measures in the proposed Act too narrow, and urges the European Commission to address material overuse, overconsumption, and material reuse beyond the proposed prioritised recycling framework. 

Together with Recycling Europe and EUROFER, the NGO Shipbreaking Platform recently published a joint statement calling on the EU to recognise the strategic importance of the European ship recycling sector and to adopt concrete measures to keep valuable scrap steel within Europe.

The Platform calls on the European Commission to use the Circular Economy Act to: 

 

- Work across key waste legislative files to close the re-flagging loophole in the EU Ship Recycling Regulation, extending its scope to the real beneficial owners of vessels and recognising flag-swapping as a practice intended to circumvent EU rules; 

- Recognise ship-derived steel as a strategic source of secondary raw material and ship recycling as a key circular sector for steel decarbonisation; 

- Accelerate the development of a Ship Material Passport, building on the Digital Product Passport under the ESPR, to track materials from design to dismantling and enable cross-sector reuse; 

- Establish appropriate financial incentives for ship-derived materials to remain in the EU, including a ship recycling return scheme as provided for under Article 29 of the EU Ship Recycling Regulation; 

- Align shipping sector subsidies, including the tonnage tax regime, with clear circularity obligations, including end-of-life recycling at EU-approved facilities; 

- Ensure dedicated investment under LIFE, the Innovation Fund and Horizon Europe to scale EU ship recycling capacity. 

By keeping valuable steel within the EU, these actions will: 

 

- Accelerate decarbonisation – each tonne of recycled ship steel avoids up to 1.5 tonnes of CO₂ compared with primary production, while using 72% less energy and reducing air pollution by 86%; 

- Strengthen strategic material autonomy – reducing reliance on imported iron ore and coal in line with Europe's Critical Raw Materials Act objectives; 

- Create green jobs – modern ship recycling yards and green steel production generate skilled employment in engineering, environmental management and advanced manufacturing; 

- Uphold Europe's global leadership – reinforcing the EU as a front-runner in environmental stewardship, worker safety and circular economy policy. 

"Bringing ship recycling back to Europe is also a matter of environmental justice. End-of-life ships contain asbestos, PCBs, heavy metals and toxic paints. Too many EU-owned vessels are still exported for dismantling on South Asian beaches, despite severe risks to workers, coastal communities and ecosystems, and despite international prohibitions on such exports. The EU must take responsibility for its own waste."
Benedetta Mantoan - Policy Manager - NGO Shipbreaking Platform

The NGO Shipbreaking Platform will continue to follow the Commission's proposals closely and calls on EU decision-makers to deliver a Circular Economy Act that is ambitious, enforceable and fit for the realities of global ship recycling.

 

For the NGO Shipbreaking Platform's position on the Circular Economy Act, click here.

Platform News – Workshop on Best Available Techniques in ship recycling held at University of Strathclyde, followed by a visit to Kishorn Dry Dock

Posted on by Nicola Mulinaris

The NGO Shipbreaking Platform successfully organised a workshop on Best Available Techniques (BAT) in ship recycling at the Technology and Innovation Centre, University of Strathclyde, followed by a visit to Kishorn Dry Dock and Port between 12–14 November 2025.

The event, part of the Safe, Healthy and Environmental Ship Recycling (SHEREC) project, brought together experts, industry stakeholders, and policymakers from the UK to explore innovative approaches to ship recycling and possibilities for enhancing capacity in the country.

Discussions highlighted the importance of advancing circularity, including the use of AI-based solutions, optimised material recovery, the concept of ship material passports and how advanced technologies can strengthen competitiveness.

Building on the theme of innovation, Johannes Thrane from Afdecom and John Jacobsen from Circles of Life presented the OPPSIRK project, which focuses on upcycling steel from decommissioned ships for direct reuse in the construction sector. Anıl Sefer Günbeyaz from the University of Strathclyde shared further case studies on circularity in the maritime sector, and emphasized the added value of having a ship material passports to support better material recovery and broader decarbonisation efforts.

Focusing on capacity to recycle ships in the UK, Steve Welham presented Kishorn Port and Dry Dock’s ongoing expansion and unique deep sea access capabilities. Mike Dixon from Wolvinston Group reflected on lessons learnt from Atlas Decom’s efforts to establish a new ship recycling yard at Inchgreen Dry Dock and why it never recycled a vessel. Bill Cattanach from the North Sea Decommissioning Authority outlined the complex challenges of recycling floating oil and gas structures, particularly those contaminated with Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (NORM). He underlined the need for fully licensed UK-based facilities to safely carry out such operations in compliance with international law and national regulations.

Finally, Rafet Emek Kurt from the University of Strathclyde shared his award-winning work on developing SHIELD (Safety Human Incident & Error Learning Database), a human factors tool used to analyse and ultimately prevent maritime accidents, and how it could be used to better understand underlying accidents in also the ship recycling sector.

The workshop concluded with a visit to Kishorn Port and Dry Dock.

"The workshop reinforced that advancing BAT, circularity, and sustainable practices in ship recycling requires policy support, technological innovation, stakeholder engagement, and strong human-centred approaches. Many ships will be heading for scrap in the coming years of which the UK could sustainably recycle, all whilst contributing high quality scrap for the decarbonisation of its steel production."
Ekin Sakin - Policy Officer - NGO Shipbreaking Platform