Creating Markets for Sustainable Practices in the Maritime Sector

This paper looks at recycling in general and ship dismantling in particular as an economic activity, contextualising it in debates about economization and marketization. It maintains that recycling is an economic activity which extends the boundaries of markets, by internalizing objects formerly externalized such as wastes. Taking Denmark and Scandinavian countries ship dismantling and recycling industry as its empirical focus, the paper aims at discussing how recycling connects to wider debates about the constitution of markets, and shows the importance of metrological devices as market devices to the economization of recycling. It further shows that, in materials recovery, measurement is a critical activity due to the problems in defining the values involved. This makes recycling difficult to stabilize as an economic activity. The consequences are considerable: notably, the possibility of economic failure can threaten the viability of the recycling industry, with considerable impacts on the economy of companies due to the high societal pressure. Furthermore, this paper aims at showing the interconnection between the processes of economization, marketization and politicization of a market (Callon, 2009). More specifically it provides empirical evidence of the stabilisation of a market in which different values are at play and are deeply connected.