Texas shipyard gained EU ship recycling accreditation

The Brownsville site is the first US shipbreaking site to achieve this EU accreditation. It can now help EU-based ship owners – as well as ships flying the flags of EU member states – to responsibly recycle their ships at end of life.

The regulations set standards for environmental and health and safety compliance which go above and beyond stringent US regulatory requirements. The International Shipbreaking facility meets EU requirements that ships are completely recycled on hard surfaces to avoid pollutants such as chemicals from paints contaminating the soil and water.

As of 2018, 90.4% of the world’s end-of-life vessels were broken up on the beaches of South East Asia in rudimentary conditions, according to the NGO Shipbreaking Platform . The EU SRR aims to help responsible ship owners clean up their act and make the shipbreaking industry greener and safer. Increasingly, banks and investors are unwilling to fund shipping companies who cannot prove that their ships are recycled responsibly.

“We have just received and safely moored our first EU ship recycling project, the MT Wolverine. There is a big future in this industry and, over the past year we have seen three times the number of inquiries from EU ship owners. This indicates the shipping industry is taking more responsibility for how their ships are recycled, rather than using the South Asian shipbreaking beaches.”

— Chris Green, Senior Manager at International Shipbreaking Ltd LLC