In May 2009, the International Maritime Organization adopted a Convention for the Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships. This convention aims at ensuring that ships, when being recycled after reaching the end of their operational lives do not pose any risk to human health and safety or to the environment. Bureau Veritas helps its clients comply with this Convention. Vincent Lefebvre, Head of CAP and Environment Section at Bureau Veritas, worked on the new Rules for the Certification Inventory of Hazardous Materials, developed by Bureau Veritas.

Hello, Vincent Lefebvre.

The Convention has set up new recycling requirements. What are they?

The Convention on Ship Recycling has set up new requirements for both ships and ship recycling facilities to address the growing concerns about safety, health, environment and social accountability in the ship recycling industry.

Basically the Convention requests the materials on board a vessel which are potentially hazardous to human health or environment to be minimized as far as possible and, in any case, identified and quantified at the construction stage and through the operating life of the vessel.

Before scrapping, the ship managers are to select a ship recycling facility complying with the IMO Convention and up-date the list of hazardous materials. This list, called a Green Passport, is to be used by the recycling facility to prepare a recycling plan.

Could you explain what the Green Passport is?

As I said, the Green Passport is basically an inventory of materials present in ship’s structure and equipment which are potentially hazardous to health or the environment.

For new ships, it is prepared by the ship yard at the design and construction stage from the Material Declarations which are collected by their suppliers through the complete supply chain, from raw material to end products.

For existing ships, it is prepared by the ship Owner through a review of the available documentation, a visual inspection and an analysis of material samplings taken on board.

It is maintained up-dated throughout the ship's operational life by the Owner.

The Green Passport is a safe and environmentally sound approach towards ship recycling and is an evidence of best management practice and social accountability awareness.

How does Bureau Veritas help ship owners and shipyards comply with the Green Passport and more generally with the new recycling requirements?

Bureau Veritas has published the 'Rules for the Green Passport' in January 2009. The document provides the requirements for awarding and maintaining of the notation ‘Green Passport’ for new building and existing ships. It has been specially developed to prepare our clients for complying with the future IMO Convention on Recycling of Ships.

In addition, through our Marine Consultancy services, we can assist the Owner to compile the Inventory of Hazardous Materials at any stage of the ship’s life and assess the recycling facilities to dismantle a vessel.
We can also assist the recycling facilities to comply with the Convention requirements and to prepare ship recycling plans.

Finally, we have already demonstrated our capacity to respond to clients needs for material samplings tests through our 140 laboratory worldwide network.

Know more about our Marine services

Read our Service Sheet on Classification of ships