Better than shipbreaking.
Better than shipbreaking.
Edit: On thinking about this tangent, it seems that if global regulation is the only solution, it would make sense to enforce regulation from the ship building side (in western countries), rather than the wrecking side (in developing countries) which will only displace the bad practices to less scrupulous countries. A solution might be sizable amount of money that had to be paid to escrow that could not be released back to the owner until the ship has been disposed of in an environmentally sound manner, incentivizing and funding the proper scrapping of ships. Or perhaps a levy which funds safety practices and equipment for scrapping companies
I used the term “globalization” as a proxy for free trade. That was bad on my part.
Most ships are built in Asia as well. The US basically doesn't have any sort of non-military ship building industry.
The industry is extremely polluting (to the environment and the workers) and the working conditions (incl. safety) are dire to put it nicely.