One sometimes might think that mass suicide would be an alternative to all this disapproval.

It is happening in shipping too, as more people wake up to the terrifying implications of the tonnage overhang of all those ships which in a moment of madness, people ordered to

a. seize market share

b. do what everyone else was doing

c. buy before the prices went up

d. demonstrate to their shareholders that they were alive and alert.

Now the recipients of all those new ships, operating under their full deadweight of debt are calling for the old to be put to the sword.

We have seen it all before.  Old ships are deemed to be “obsolete” because they can do the business at “uncompetitive” rates, because their owners are not having to write a huge cheque to the financiers every month. It is seen to be somehow “unfair”, that these ships are continuing to trade, because they have been long paid for and lovingly maintained by their prudent owners over the years. Disgraceful. Euthanasia is called for.

Now, of course the environment has been dragged into the debate this time around, the old tonnage being labelled as gas–guzzlers and emitters of all sorts of harmful substances, while the efficient new tonnage is so much more “sustainable”.

There are the new efficiency indices that can be employed to bash their operators and force these old ladies into a one way trip to the sub-continent. They already have insurers and some risk-averse charterers on the side of the ageists, and the greens will be powerful allies.

Sure, innovation and efficiency are great, but let us hear it for well-built, solid ships that have been properly maintained and deserve a bit of reward for their owners in their declining years.

While the robustness of that idea has yet to be fully tested, its tenets were examined by demolition brokers at Informa’s recent Ship Recycling event. Scrapping ships is a business swaddled in double-speak and obfuscation: sustainable recycling, end-of-life ships, sale for demolition. All of these suggest a hi-tech and closely-monitored approach to treating what amounts to hazardous waste.

The reality could not be further from the truth of course, with brokers working to secure margin, owners looking for one last profit and cash buyers taking the ships to (in almost all cases) beach them on shorelines in South Asia, where swarms of low paid workers will strip every last usable piece, along with a deal of toxic and hazardous materials.

Even when the IMO’s Hong Kong Convention convention is ratified, this is unlikely to change but the convention is designed to at least list the toxic materials onboard and seek to lever up standards by applying both the market and CSR to the yards located in recycling states.

Between that utopia and the reality of now lies a phalanx of shipbrokers. The broker is there to offer added value and so it proved during their session of the conference. With only one exception, they agreed that brokers could act as a source of knowledge and data on best practice, encouraging owners to make ‘the right’ choices.

This is pretty theoretical but if it works for Equasis, why not recycling yards? If owners could be encouraged to anonymously pool knowledge then brokers would be better placed to advise other owners on a yard’s compliance or otherwise with Hong Kong.

Some do this already of course but there is a role here for a third party to act as clearing house for the information and provide owners with at least one tool to help them recycle ships at yards which are trying to improve their standards.

Even this is a sticking plaster over a bullet wound. Scrapping is the industry’s last huge, dirty secret: a shameful nexus of greed and globalisation, justified with the spurious claim that the yard workers are grateful for the employment the practice brings.

No wonder that the industry is beginning to move towards scrapping in China where, at least the ships are docked, before being dismantled. As the conference heard, this is no guarantee by itself of better standards but it provides at least a glimmer of hope.

Owners cannot rely on media coverage either, because demonstrating ‘green recycling’ is perilously close to being a good news story and therefore of little interest to editors. No, recycling has become a CSR issue for shipping. What a shame then that large parts of the industry refuse to put any store by the concept and prefer to haggle for the last dollar.

Let’s forget the various traders in carbon and concentrate on something rather more worthwhile, such as the engineers and technologists who, rather than the scientists, really will make the difference.

Speaking last week at a Maritime London gathering, Lloyd’s Register’s Marine Director Tom Boardley was able to give only a range of options, which might emerge from the Cop 15 chaos, as it was still work in progress.

But he was clear about the opportunities presented to his organisation by the perceived need for cleaner, greener ships. And all over the world of marine technology, bright people are considering how ships can be made more efficient, how to make the expensive fuel go further, and how to minimise the impact that a ship makes upon the environment.

There is a whole raft of improvement that can be made in the realms of fuel management, while engine manufacturers are already well advancd in the reduction of harmful emissions through a whole range of measures that will produce fewer of these gases without sacrificing speed. Thereare all sorts of improvements that seem possible and which will aggregate to substantial reductions in the environmental footprint, from hydrodynamic enhancements, to the vast arrays of solar panels on the garage roof of a large car carrier. Better paints, smoother underwater forms, more efficient propellers – it all will help.

On the operational front, there is a huge amount that can be done, and to existing ships, moreover, to smarten up charters so that ships do not steam at high speed between ports, only to wait ages for a berth at the destination. Last week there were more than 40 large bulk carriers swinging around their anchors off the New South Wales port of Newcastle, which is not known for its brilliant holding ground. How much wasted effort is encapsulated in that simple statement of fact?

There is, says Boardley, a new interest in the concept of the nuclear merchant ship, which might surprise some people and enrage others, but has a good deal of economic and environmental sense in the idea, of a merchant ship that will need refuelling but once in its operational life.

And then there is recycling, and a vast tonnage of ships which are less efficient and more expensive to operate, and which could be suitably disposed of. It is all grist to somebody’s mill, and will cheer up shipbuilders no end, even though the more hopeful are already offering“greener” ships! And really, nobody had to wait for the politicians to unravel something meaningful from Cop 15. It is there for the asking.