The Men Who Take Ships Apart With Their Hands

Beaching is the cheapest way in the world to scrap a ship and the most dangerous: no dry dock, no containment, tides carrying the residue out, and workers cutting through hulls that still hold asbestos, PCBs and fuel sludge. Young Power in Social Action, founded in Chattogram on 20 May 1985, has worked on the yards since 1997 — not to close the industry, which employs the district, but to make it survivable. It runs safety training and awareness for workers, documents deaths and injuries that would otherwise go unrecorded, and pushes yards toward the Hong Kong Convention standards; its current Green and Safer Ship Recycling project works with ten yards, reaching 5,000 workers directly and around 20,000 indirectly. YPSA's own count recorded more than 90 worker deaths between 2005 and 2011, and its advocates keep pointing out that a green certificate on a yard is not the same as a safe one.