During the 2023 GREEN4SEA Athens Forum, Dr. Konstantinos Galanis, Chairman, International Ship Recycling Association, pointed out that ship recycling is not a stand-alone industry. He noted that organizations should be empowered to foster collaborative thinking to further drive waste management by applying safe processes and utilizing innovation.
Ship recycling is not a stand-alone industry. We shall empower organizations to foster collaborative thinking to further drive waste management by applying safe processes and utilizing innovation. By closing the loop and leveraging agile frameworks, we help business grow organically and foster society’s mindset.
Key challenges we have to deal with
- Minimize toxic waste.
- Integrate Inventory of Hazardous Materials.
- Unify regulations and ensure enforcement.
The major goals we have to achieve with are that we always must comply with legal framework, that is accepted worldwide. We have seen several regions, national and international requirements that ship owners have to deal with. We also need to implement safe process across the world, and we need to reach not only the Carbon Net Zero but the Environmental Zero footprint. We are co-operating with the maritime industry members, the waste disposal facilities and steel mills, to find solutions that will be accepted by all members. We need to support the societies and integrate the economies because the cleaner and safer you are, you can only actually integrate.
In order to have these sustainable options by application, we must always maintain a Holistic Approach. We can’t try to solve each problem, one by one. We need to focus on the hierarchy of what is the primary goal and to start optimizing the several other issues.
- Plan: Synergize scalable solutions in cooperations with shipowners, waste reception facilities and colleagues.
- Calculate: Disseminate standardized metrics for incidents, emissions, and waste.
- Laugh: Deploy strategic networks with compelling business needs for optimizing processes.
- Strategy: Foster holistically superior methodologies by assessing other transportation sectors and only.
- Design: Coordinate business applications that allow smooth transition to future and follow the leaders.
There are tools, for example EU Taxonomy, which is a classification system establishing a list of environmentally sustainable economic activities that:
Assists: EU to scale up sustainable investment and implement the European Green Deal transform the EU into a modern, resource – efficient and competitive economy, ensuring;
- zero net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050
- economic growth decoupled from resource use, and
- no person and no place left behind
Provides: Companies, investors, and policymakers with appropriate definitions for which economic activities can be considered environmentally sustainable.
Creates: Security for investors from greenwashing.
Helps: Companies to become more climate friendly, mitigate market fragmentation and help shift investments where they are most needed.
The Taxonomy Regulation establishes six environmental objectives:
- Recycle: Climate change mitigation
- Save Energy: Climate change adaption
- Protect & preserve: Sustainable use and protection of water and marine resources
- Green Steel: Transition to a circular economy
- Act & Monitor: Pollution prevention and control
- Ship’s Hull: Protection and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystems
Finally, there are areas of growth. We must integrate Environmental Monitoring to minimize ship’s environmental footprint. We also need to improve recyclability of future ship & assess end-of-life management / impact of innovative technologies and study shipping ecology and measure ship recycling value for society and economies.
Above article has been edited from Dr. Konstantinos Galanis’ presentation during the 2023 GREEN4SEA Athens Forum.
Explore more by watching his video presentation here below
The views presented are only those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of SAFETY4SEA and are for information sharing and discussion purposes only.
Great article!