Around the 1980s, with government’s promotion and dissemination policies for FRP (Fiberglass Reinforced Plastics) of the government as a main material of fishing boats, approximately 97% of the entire fishing boats in Korea have utilized FRP until now. Nevertheless, diverse social and environmental issues have emerged due to the susceptibility to fire and the generation of substances detrimental to human health during the construction process of FRP fishing vessels. Especially, the high disposal cost and the limitation of recycling technology in the disposal process of FRP fishing boats have elicited attention to circular economy. This research intended to grasp the management status and problems of disposed FRP fishing boats in Korea, and to assess the level of competitive advantage of FRP fishing boats’ recycling technologies of FRP fishing boats based on VRIO (Value, Rarity, Imitability, Organization) analysis through domestic and foreign management policies and related recycling examples. According to the survey of 161 respondents, including the industry, stakeholders and experts related to the collection, treatment and recycling of fisheries wastes, it was revealed that FRP fishing boats’ recycling technologies of FRP fishing boats are at the level of ‘unused competitive advantage’ that satisfied the level of value, rarity and imitability, but not the level of organization.

A scrapped fiber-reinforced plastic(FRP) fishing vessel causes many environmental problems, because technology development for recycling FRP vessel has not been adequately addressed. FRP is a main material for constructing a small coastal fishing vessel that is an object of reduction policy. Therefore, the FRP wastes derived a scrapped fishing vessel are increasing. In this study, I investigated an effective disposal process for FRP through the analysis of the actual conditions of scrapped FRP fishing vessel. The treatment processes of scrapped FRP fishing vessel are carried out with oil-removing, dismantling, intermediated processing(crushing), and then reclaiming follows burning in the final processing in Korea. However, in Japan, several recycling methods have been developed, for example, the incineration including thermal recovery, the use of cement-reclamation, and the use of asphalt concrete aggregate, because the method of reclaiming after incinerating which is generally used in Korea produces a toxic by-product such as dioxin.