The Hidden Green Trade of Bangladesh’s Ship Recycling Coast
Written by Zahra Ali
Hailed as the “Land of Rivers”, Bangladesh is a country shaped by water, abundance, and vibrant ecosystems. The country is a meeting point of land and tide, a delta nation where rivers braid into the sea and the mangroves that hold the coastline together like a living spine.
The Sundarbans, one of the world’s largest mangrove systems, is a sanctuary of biodiversity as well as a shielding climate infrastructure from absorbing carbon to buffering storms and sustaining coastal life via its tidal wetlands and mangrove root networks – all of which, stabilise shorelines, filter water and nourishes the fishes. With this natural wealth, Bangladesh should be protected as a global ecological trust. Instead the global economy has increasingly positioned it as a final destination for the world’s industrial leftovers.
During 2024, Bangladesh, alongside India, Pakistan and Türkiye, accounted for 91.7% of the global ship recycling market, making these countries a central dismantling hub of receiving the global economies leftovers in steel. Economically the ship recycling industry feeds Bangladesh’s construction economy by supplying scrap steel, with sources finding that around 50 – 60% of recovered ship steel is used in domestic re-rolling mills. The ship recycling industry also generates state revenue through duties and taxes whilst also providing livelihoods for many therefore, embedding this sector into the country’s developmental model and extending into its political priorities.
Where sustainability becomes more than just a technical word, is down to how the same system that brings economic value can also distribute ecological risk. Examples include, ships carrying hazardous materials and dismantling without robust containment on open tidal shores, can enable pollution to enter sediments and the coastal waters which ultimately threatens fragile marine ecosystems. As international attention on ship recycling intensifies, Bangladesh is navigating a new political reality: the Hong Kong Convention entered into force on 26 June 2025, raising expectations for safe and environmentally sound dismantling. This means that Bangladesh’s role in the global circular economy is increasingly tied to standards, enforcement and credibility.
The broken ships on Bangladesh’s coast once carried the goods that make modern life feel effortless and accessible: fast deliveries, fast fashion, global supply chains. Yet the burden does not fall evenly. Ship recycling is often framed as circular economy progress: reuse steel, reduce new mining, cut emissions. However, the contradiction remains – what does sustainability mean when the circular economy operates through risk transfer, in which we see hazardous materials are not managed through environmental controls but through geography? The global North benefits from cheaper trade, cleaner supply chains on paper, whilst Bangladesh absorbs the hazards not only in its coastal waters but also the bodies of frontline workforce, whose safety is more than often negotiable. This exemplifies how the displacement of environmental risk becomes political.
Sustainability through a policy lens
Sustainability in this context cannot be limited to the carbon efficiency or the material recovery rates. A policy-led definition must account for the externalities of that which are, the environmental liabilities, public health impacts, and long term ecosystem degradation that can accompany industrial activity when the safeguards are weak or not equitably enforced. If ship recycling contributes to circularity by recovering steel, that benefit should be examined alongside the full cost of hazardous waste management, coastal water quality, sediment contamination, and occupational exposure. The issue is not whether ship recycling can be sustainable in principle, but whether the regulatory conditions exist for it to be sustainable in practice.
As much as ship recycling has become an environmental issue, it has equally become a governance issue also. The entry into force of the Hong Kong Convention (26 June 2025) has raised the baseline of international expectations for safe and environmentally ethical ship recycling. In policy terms, it signals a shift from voluntary commitments to a stronger compliance driven environment, where credibility is increasingly tied to demonstrable implementation for example; the traceability of vessels, hazardous materials inventories, worker protection standards, and auditable waste handling systems. For Bangladesh, this creates opportunity, however some risk. If gaps in enforcement threaten market access and reputation, this can translate and lead into reduced demand, tighter financing, higher compliance costs and volatility across Bangladesh’s steel and coastal contraction in a scrap-dependant supply chain alongside a mounting political pressure to reform. On the flip side of this, we see that the opportunity of compliance enables Bangladesh to position as a country that is credible as a higher standard hub within the global circular economy.
At the same time, sustainability is not just about recycling steel efficiently; it is about whether the risks are unfairly pushed onto certain coastlines and communities. The current global model concentrates on retired vessel dismantling in a small number of countries, pushing these environmental and health risks. This concentration reflects a global political economy, one in which those who benefit most from shipping-enabled consumption are not amongst those who manage the impacts. A sustainability framework that ignores this imbalance normalises “risk transfer” as a standard practice, rather than treating it as a governance failure requiring correction.
Ethical Accountability and Stewardship
From an islamic perspective, sustainability governance is inseparable from ethical accountability. Rahmah (رحمة) mercy; it is a governing principle that requires policy to reduce preventable harm, especially where risks fall on those with the least protection. In the context of ship recycling, rahmah means refusing a model where coastal communities and yard labourers become the shock absorbers of global convenience, and instead policy should treat the safety of people and environmental protection as baseline obligation rather than optional upgrades.
Equally, haqq (حق) rights, rephrames sustainability as a matter of entitlement, not charity, The rights to clean water, safe work, and a liveable environment is not a “trade-off” to be balanced against efficiency; it is a minimum standard that economic activity must not violate. When hazardous materials are mishandled or pollution controls are weak, it is not only an environmental issue – it is a violation of haqq, as it shifts the cost of production onto bodies and ecosystems that did not consent to carry it.
Maslahah (مصلحة), the public interest, should be at the core of policy in this framework, meaning that regulation must prioritise long-term collective wellbeing over short-term revenue or competitive advantage. Maslahah demands a wider accountability: not just the value of recovered steel, but the long run costs of contamination, health impacts, and ecological degradation that undermine public welfare and state capacity, it also pushes against the ideology of “growth at any cost”, whereby we see the public interest, includes Bangladesh’s independence of coastal systems.
Bangladesh dependence on coastal systems is not just symbolic, but also structural. Coastal wetlands and mangroves support fisheries and aquaculture value chains that sustain livelihoods, while also acting as natural buffers that reduce cyclone and storm-surge impacts. These systems also underpin water security in the coastal belt, by moderating salt levels and protecting water quality, and they sit alongside critical economic infrastructure, including ports and coastal logistics. When coastal ecosystems disintegrate, the consequences cascade across public health, food security, disaster response costs, and economic stability – this concludes as to precisely why maslahah required policymakers to treat environmental safeguards as a core public interest obligation, rather than a discretionary add on.
Finally taqwa (تقوى) God conscious responsibility, introduces a standard of integrity: accountability even when harm is easy to hide, delay and/or relocate. Taqwa resists performative sustainability. It requires transparency, credible monitoring, and enforcement that is strong enough to prevent risk transfer, whereby the global economy keeps its supply chains clean on paper by shifting the hazards across borders. In practice, taqwa aligns with governance that can be evidenced: the traceability of vessels, verified hazardous material inventories, audited waste handling, and protections that are implemented consistently rather than selectively.
Taken together, these principles shift the central question from whether ship recycling is profitable to whether it is governed justly and wholly. Governed in a way that protects rights, prevents harm and sustains the coastal ecosystems and communities that Bangladesh relies upon. In Islamic ethical terms, stewardship is a duty measured by outcomes.