A new ship recycling firm promises to make the decommissioning of heavy container ships safer and cleaner.

Leviathan, a Germany-based ship recycling firm, expects to cut large container ships no longer in operation into smaller, more manageable pieces by blasting the ship’s steel with powerful jets of sand and water from robotic arms.

This reportedly low carbon process, which uses electrically powered robotic arms, will turn a typically illegal decommissioning process that is often performed in South Asia by unprotected human laborers into a safer process via automation.

According to Leviathan, the current approach for decommissioning heavy container ships involves the use of fossil-fuel powered torches that cut ships into smaller pieces. However, this approach reportedly pollutes waterways with emissions from the torches and waste from pieces of the ships that are blasted off. Further, those operating the torches are performing dangerous tasks — oftentimes without the appropriate safety gear.

As such, Leviathan suggests that its automated approach can prevent fatalities from such operations by automating the process. Likewise, the new approach can be performed without emissions from fossil fuel powered torches and steel, once blasted off, can be recovered and reused.

In the future, Leviathan aims to use computer simulations to guide the robotic arms in determining the best and most efficient chopping approaches.