Original version

BBC World Service Online

Business Daily

Factual: Money

The daily drama of money and work from the BBC.

Business Daily: Ship scrappage and global trade

Ship scrappage and global trade

07/09/2012

BBC World Service - Business Daily, Ship scrappage and global trade

Where old ships go to die and why standardised pallets could revolutionise global trade.

Where old ships go to die and who clears up the mess. And that little square thing they put under crates to lift them onto lorries. Is the pallet the most important object in the global economy?

We examine some of the less glamorous minutiae of global trade - like where old ships go to die, and who clears up the mess afterwards. We have a report from the ship-wrecking yards of Bangladesh.

And we shine a light on that little square thing they place under heavy crates of stuff to lift them on and off lorries. Could the humble pallet in fact be the single most important object in the global economy? Marshall White, director of the Pallet & Container Research Laboratory at Virginia Tech University, thinks it might be. 

Plus the scourge of the license. The USA may have a reputation as the champion of unregulated commerce, but some 30% of its workforce require specialist licenses to work their trade, and our regular commentator Steve Fritzinger argues that such restrictions, put there in the name of consumer-protection, often border on the ridiculous.

(Image: A ship-breaking yard in Chittagong, Bangladesh. Credit: FARJANA K. GODHULY/AFP/Getty Images)

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Business Daily

Ship scrappage and global trade

Genres

Brand

BBC World Service Online

About BBC World Service