If you haven’t read this you should read this because it’s great.
Short version:
If you have an old beater of a boat that probably has asbestos and hydrocarbon sludge and God only knows what else, you don’t want to take it apart on your pristine shores because, well, you have real spendy employees who are protected by laws and regulations, and so too beaches and so forth.
So you send it to India or Pakistan or somewhere and they do it for you, and a lot of people die.
This sounds bad. But it’s a lot more complicated than all that, as William Langewiesche explains. Really, it’s great and you should read it.
A lot of people think this is bad, though, and not without reason: you’re just exporting your asbestosis and pollution and death. And some of them criminalize it, and then if you try to do this, you can go to jail. Which is how one Norwegian found himself staring at six months in the ice-pokey, or whatever sort of penal system Norway has.