Green Passport as an opportunity for Polish shipyards

The growing problem of ship recycling has mobilized the European Parliament to pay attention to the hazardous substances used as early as the ship construction stage. Given that almost all ships contain significant amounts of hazardous materials such as asbestos, polychlorinated biphenyls, tributyltin, heavy metals in paints, and large quantities of oils, etc., ships intended for scrapping should be treated as hazardous waste. Restrictions on the use of hazardous materials in shipbuilding are expected, and for this purpose, the Green Passport document has been developed, which contains an inventory of hazardous substances. Polish shipyards wanting to be more competitive should offer the construction of specialized vessels with a
Green Passport. In the future, this will also allow for the preparation of shipyard areas for ship scrapping and applying for authorization for ship recycling. In 2008, only 20 ships with a total deadweight of
373.7 thousand tons were built in Polish shipyards, and the order book as of 31.12.2008 amounted to 64 ships [1]. Globally, 2,049 ships were built in 2007, and the order book amounted to 9,331.
The largest order books are held by Asian shipyards in Korea, Japan, China, and India, as they demonstrate the highest production capacities. The cheapest ships in the world are produced by
the Chinese. They owe this mainly to very low labor costs. (…)

Green Passport as an opportunity for Polish shipyards – PDF file for download