Chittagong is the Key Ship Breaking Yard in Bangladesh

Chittagong is the second biggest city in Bangladesh after Dhaka with a population of approximately 4 million people. It is very infamous for it's ship-breaking industry, which occupies a long stretch of beach around 15-20 kilometers north of the city. I have heard a lot about it before I came to Bangladesh, and decided that this was something that I had to see. Because of the negative press that the industry received and continues to receive from environmental organizations such as Greenpeace, it is very difficult for foreigners to visit the area and almost impossible to take photos. Knowing this, I decided to ask a couple of young guys working in the hotel where I was staying if they knew the area, and if it was possible to visit. One of them told me how to find it, and I asked him to come with me and be my translator. He agreed to come with me for a few hours the next morning before his started his shift at the hotel. I hired an auto rickshaw for the 40 kilometer round trip the next morning and off we went.There has been a significant increase in prices of ship demolitions. This is probably due to the increasingly growing global demand for metal, and ships not only have a lot of it but the steel is generally of high quality. The prices for ship demolitions in Bangladesh went up from $440 per ton in 2006 to $590 in 2007. That's a huge increase for a single year. The volume of ship demolitioned between the big three countries (Bangladesh, India and Pakistan) declined from 310 in 2006 to 301 in 2007. Bangladesh remains the number one ship demolisher in the world (151 ships in 2007)