Scrapping on the cheap: Greenpeace Caught Dumping Rainbow Warrior on Bangladeshi Beach
By Paul Homewood
h/t Joe Public
NoTricks has the story about Greenpeace’s slightly less than green scrapping of Rainbow Warrior II:
Chalk up another one for hypocrisy. Do as I say, not as I do! From Greenpeace.
Whenever someone else makes a “mistake”, do-gooder organizations like Greenpeace are quick to demand resignations, hefty penalties and punishment. Yet when these same organizations get caught doing wrong, they all claim how it was all a mistake, just a misunderstanding, an honest oversight, etc. and then plead for forgiveness, which they feel they alone are entitled to.
Greenpeace environmental protection ship winds up polluting the environment while being scrapped later on a Bangladeshi beach. Photo (2006): public domain.
The latest involves Greenpeace’s dirty scrapping of its retired Rainbow Warrior II ship on a Bangladeshi beach under horrendous environmental and social conditions, Spiegel reports here.
Greenpeace has always been a harsh critic, and often justifiably so, of ship-scrapping under awful environmental, work and social conditions in third world countries like India or Bangladesh. So it’s surprising to hear that the famous environmental protection organization has been caught breaking its own Commandments (probably to save money).
“Made a mistake”
In a statement on the decommissioning of Rainbow Warrior II by Greenpeace International in Amsterdam, the organization wrote that they “made a mistake” in allowing the decommissioned ship “to be scrapped on a beaching yard in Bangladesh” in a way that “does not live up to the standards” they themselves have set.
The statement then explains how it was all just a big misunderstanding and that they “should have consulted” their partners in the NGO Shipbreaking Platform and the Basel Action Network,. “We did not. No excuse. We should have.”
In the statement there is no mention of any resignations, or massive fines arising from their admitted environmental and social transgressions. The statement was not even translated in German and so did not even appear at the German Greenpeace website (Germany is a generous donor to Greenpeace).
Whenever big corporations get caught doing similar mischief, Greenpeace is often the last to forgive and always first in line to demand consequences, reparations and punishment.
Unsafe, damaging to the marine environment
The practice of chopping up decommissioned ships like Rainbow Warrior II is often done on the beaches of third world countries where the task is “fundamentally unsafe, exploitative of workers and damaging to the marine environment”, Greenpeace says. Yet the high profile environmental organization could not be bothered to ensure a proper disposal of its own ship.
“Should have…should have…should have…”
By the time Greenpeace had realized their mistake, they said it was too late because the ship had already been “beached and readied to be cut up”. The world leading environmental organization also added that they first “should have examined all options to have the ship decommissioned ‘off the beach’ and in a way that provides guarantees that all wastes generated will be managed in the most environmentally safe way possible.”
Greenpeace added that they would seek to ensure that specific wastes that couldn’t be treated safely, ‘downstream’, in Bangladesh could be sent out of the country for management.
Permanent damage to reputation
Spiegel wrote that the affair has damaged Greenpeace’s reputation: The German news magazine wrote online: “Instead of making their own mistakes as transparent as possible, Greenpeace tries to minimize the damage as long as possible” and it was “too late for controlling the damage”.
Spiegel also noted that global scrap dealer GMS who took over the Rainbow Warrior from Greenpeace issued a statement on November 14, i.e. just one day before the Greenpeace statement:
Greenpeace has finally recognized that safe and responsible recycling using the beaching method can be conducted in the Indian subcontinent and that Bangladesh specifically can be a green recycling destination.
Greenpeace’s previously owned vessel, MV Rongdhonu ex-Rainbow Warrior II, was recently beached for recycling at PHP Family yard in Chittagong. MV Rongdhonu ex-Rainbow Warrior II is a 1957 United Kingdom-built hospital ship that Greenpeace International acquired in 1989, according to French NGO Robi
Workers on the beach at Chittagong
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
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Reblogged this on HiFast News Feed.
Greenpeace always has been ‘inconsistent’.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthnews/10920198/Greenpeace-executive-flies-250-miles-to-work.html
Paul
Careful. That last photograph “Rainbow Warrior II at Chittagong” is not Rainbow Warrior. The ship shown is about ten times the size of it and has a bridge and superstructure entirely the wrong shape.
I suspect the caption should read “Conditions at Chittagong” or something.
Thanks
It was my translation from Der Spiegel!!
Now amended
#1 Greenpeace clearly did issue an apology
cos when Rainbow Warrior to Friendship 8 years ago to become a hospital ship they did have an agreement that end of ship-life would be properly done.
#2 But reporting should make it clear that it is not Greenpeace itself that is scrapping the sheet, but rather its cousin organisation.
https://www.mo.be/en/news/rainbow-warrior-shipbreaking-beach-bangladesh
typo “ship”
Yes, but you have to consider all those highly-paid green recycling jobs created in the third world.
Also of note is this
“The row comes after Pascal Husting, Greenpeace International’s Programme Director, was exposed earlier this year as having commuted the 250 miles between Luxembourg and Amsterdam by plane since 2012.
Each trip is believed to have cost Greenpeace £200 and would have generated 142kg of carbon dioxide emissions, it was said.
Dr Parr said Mr Husting’s behaviour was ‘a mistake’ and ‘should never have happened’.”
from https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2794116/greenpeace-condemned-original-founder-evil-guilty-losing-humanitarian-roots.html
And
” The evil that Greenpeace does 20
Speaking of self-righteous busybodies – which we were below, see On our masters and commanders – one of the most egregious is Greenpeace. Wielding amazing power to influence political decisions internationally, these bigoted prigs cause millions of the world’s poorest to die by preventing them from having the means to save themselves. Their unproven and in any case imbecilic excuse is that the marvelous saving products of science and technology are harmful to Nature.”
From https://theatheistconservative.com/2010/01/16/the-evil-that-greenpeace-does/
And also GreenPiss show their duplicitous nature when trying to con Dr. Roy Spencer with front-group (or fictitious group?) for Greenpeace called “Hamilton Ellis”, supposedly headquartered in Beirut.
Read more at http://www.drroyspencer.com/2015/12/whose-supported-policies-kill-more-people-isis-or-greenpeace/
Not a nice bunch of people to be associated with, not moral, just, or considerate for people at all!
“Greens” do seem to love messing about on their motor boats, one of which racks up harbour fees on the South coast of England, apparently so that they can speed to “eco-crimes” in the English Channel. This is where your donations are going boys and girls:
Or, maybe ‘running passengers’ to make ends meet?
@Greenpeace campaigns against fossil fuels aboard diesel-burning ships and inflatable motorboats, while claiming wind and solar are cheaper and replace fuel fuels.
Rainbow Warrior III … runs on diesel-electric propulsion with it’s 3,000hp diesel engine
BY the way I looked but @EcoSenseNow hasn’t yet commented on this Bangladesh issue
RW3 has a second diesel-fuelled engine used for dependably generating its electricity, the waste heat from which keeps its crew thermally comfortable.
The river Weser, deep and wide,
Washes its wall on the southern side;
A pleasanter spot you never spied;
But, when begins my ditty,
Almost five hundred years ago,
To see the townsfolk suffer so
From vermin, was a pity.
These hypocrites are the ones that forced Shell Oil to “recycle” all the disused oil platforms in the North Sea, using the slogan “The ocean is not a dumping ground”. They cause the waste of $80B.
Another article about this:
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/greenpeaces-own-environmental-vandalism-goes-conveniently-unreported/
Do as I say, not as I do.
GreenPease also supports the use of 1080 Poison in NZ, 1080 is proven to be a reproductive poison, that has no antidote and is used in massive quantities by the NZ govt on the NZ commons and native forests, against the will of most NZders(as the govts own surveys have shown), and there is a huge medical and state coverup occurring. Is Greenpeace losing its ethics and the moral.
Context : they use 1080 to deal with NZ’s invasive mammal problem.
eg possums on mountains etc. cos you can’t shoot everything
and trapping is labour intensive.
Reblogged this on ajmarciniak.