Thinking Green: Ellen MacArthur on recycling

I know it's sometimes hard, for those who have never seen it, to imagine the density of commercial traffic at sea – snapshots of a seemingly lonely cargo ship setting out for new horizons hardly compare to footage of a bank holiday weekend motorway congestion – yet the reality is that marine transport handles roughly 75 per cent of all the goods carried in the world today. Modern ships are fast, reliable and their sheer size is a tribute to the amazing ability of mankind to create machines that push the boundaries of technological prowess further and further.

But what happens when these sea giants have reached the end of their career? What become of their extremely complex structures and massive carcasses?

Sadly, human genius does not come into the picture at that stage, and the current state of affairs is utterly shocking: old ships are sent to Asia, where the vast majority are dismantled using a technique called 'beaching'. Get in the bay at high tide, and just wait for the ebb to do its deed. Another version is to push the boat's engines to the max one last time to rush the hull onto the sand. An army of workers then starts taking the ship apart, often without any protection at all, coming into contact with a long list of hazardous substances – asbestos, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), tributyl tin, large quantities of oils and oil sludge…all of which naturally also contaminates the environment.

The beaches of Alang in India, the world's biggest ship-breaking centre, were absolutely unspoilt before this activity started in 1983, and in just over 25 years, this former paradise has become an environmental and social nightmare, where nature and men suffer on a daily basis in a way that would put to shame even some of the worst 19th century industrial sites.

This situation raises many questions, and notably highlights the fact that our modern commercial systems absolutely have not taken into account the complete lifecycle of what they produce. Applied to packaging, that assertion generates legitimate concern – but when it comes to super tankers and boats as big as small towns, the scale of the problem suddenly becomes alarming, with an average 500 ships decommissionned each year. Some might argue that millions of tonnes of steel are salvaged annually in the process and recycled, but that's a far cry from what could be done if the conception and construction processes took the end-of-life into account from day one.

This is true for any industrially produced equipment or goods – from bicycles to toothbrushes, from building materials to clothes. More and more businesses are assessing the impact of their products, trying to minimise their energy consumption, sourcing 'better' raw materials, thinking ahead to try and determine how to make their activity more sustainable.

Recycling is common sense, but what good does it do if the emphasis is not put on working with recyclabes in the first place? This crucial transition our societies have to make involves a change in the way we all look at things, and whether we create goods or simply buy them, our first instinct should be to ask ourselves: "What will become of it when it's old or when I'm done using it?" Optimising the way we dispose of things is important, but it's even more crucial to make things than we can cleanly or usefully dispose of.

In other words, rather than spending time making better bins, let's focus on the way to use them less.

To go back to the initial point that triggered my thoughts, the very first convention on ships dismantling was adopted on May 15 by the International Maritime Organisation. It should improve environmental and safety issues related to this activity, which has recently experienced a surge since the financial crisis makes it harder for some companies to withstand the operational costs of some of their older vessels.

'Better recycling' is indeed to be applauded, but we should not stop at this. Let's take one more step and challenge the way we look at manufacturing and consumption.