recycling Article A Gap Analysis of Ship-Recycling Practices in Indonesia Sunaryo Sunaryo 1, *, Eko Djatmiko 2 , Siti Fariya 3 , Rafet Kurt 4 and Sefer Gunbeyaz 4   Citation: Sunaryo, S.; Djatmiko, E.; Fariya, S.; Kurt, R.; Gunbeyaz, S. A Gap Analysis of Ship-Recycling Practices in Indonesia. Recycling 2021, 6, 48. https://doi.org/10.3390/ recycling6030048 Academic Editors: Michele John and Junbeum Kim Received: 7 December 2020 Accepted: 30 June 2021 Published: 13 July 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering Study Program, Universitas Indonesia, Depok 16424, Indonesia 2 Department of Ocean Engineering, Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember, Surabaya 60111, Indonesia; ebdjatmiko@oe.its.ac.id 3 Department of Naval Architecture and Shipbuilding Engineering, Institut Teknologi Adhi Tama Surabaya, Surabaya 60117, Indonesia; siti-naval@strath.ac.uk 4 Department of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Marine Engineering, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow G4 0LZ, UK; rafet.kurt@strath.ac.uk (R.K.); sefer.gunbeyaz@strath.ac.uk (S.G.) * Correspondence: naryo@eng.ui.ac.id; Tel.: +62-8788-7689-548 Abstract: Ship recycling is gaining attention in Indonesia due to the increase in end-of-life ships and uneconomical nationally flagged ships, and is considered a prospective source of economic development and employment opportunity, and yet conceivably poses a threat to the health and safety of workers and the environment. There are international and national regulations that govern ship-recycling activities to ensure that the hazardous impacts of the industry are minimized. We investigated the disparity between current ship-breaking practices in Indonesia and the requirements of related international and national regulations, with the findings intended for use as a stepping stone to proposing a strategy to establish a green and sustainable ship-recycling industry. A bench- mark study of the world’s leading ship-recycling countries was conducted, and a gap analysis was performed by comparing existing international and national regulations with current ship-breaking practices in Indonesia. We identified two types of ship-breaking practices in Indonesia: Conventional environmentally unfriendly ship-breaking method, conducted by most Indonesian ship-breaking yards, and a rather modern, more environmentally friendly method, conducted by ship-repair yards. However, neither of the practices met the requirements of the regulations, and improvements are therefore needed to make the ship-recycling industry more green and sustainable, and to gain international recognition. Keywords: gap analysis; ship recycling; regulations; ship breaking; Hong Kong Convention 1. Introduction As the world’s largest archipelago with more than 17,500 islands [1,2], Indonesia very much depends on sea transportation. Since 2005, the Indonesian Government has implemented the cabotage principle and offered incentives to national shipping companies to purchase used ships from abroad by waiving importation tax [3]. As a result, the number of ships in the national fleet increased significantly from around 6000 units in 2006 to more than 32,500 units in 2019, a growth of more than 540% over 13 years [4]. However, the fleet was dominated by old ships aged between 20 and 30 years, with 20% more than 25 years old [5]. It is reported that at least 500 ships need to be replaced and sent to the ship-breaking yards every year due, but there is no official information regarding where and how these ships were demolished [6]. It can therefore be assumed that there is a great domestic market for ship recycling, which represents the potential for economic development and employment. The market could be even greater if Indonesia could become an alternative to the world’s current ship-breaking centres in South Asia (India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan) [7]. This development could be supported by upcoming more stringent international regulations that are being introduced by developed ship-breaking countries such as the European Union’s Ship-Recycling Regulation [8]. Recycling 2021, 6, 48. https://doi.org/10.3390/recycling6030048 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/recycling