CRUISE ISSUES
The GreenEffect R
Want to make your cruise trip carbon neutral?
Steve Newman explains the huge efforts and changes cruise companies are making to be more eco-friendly
educing your holiday carbon footprint by eco cruising is now being considered essential by more and more people. If cruis-
ing is the type of holiday you prefer most, then there are ways and means of ensuring that your chosen company is also doing its utmost to be green.
In one week, the cruise industry creates millions of tons of wastewater and thousands of tons of sewage, while some older vessels will have leaked contami- nants into the sea from oil seeping out of their engines. Until fairly recently, it was common practice for liners to dump a large amount of untreated waste into the oceans, causing major destruction on the ecosystems and marine life. But cruise companies have made tremendous strides forward in the past fi ve years, cutting their waste in half. For example, some are employing new gas turbines that drastically reduce nitrogen and sulphur emissions and others have installed seawater scrubbers to remove smokestack pollutants.
32 WORLD OF CRUISING I Summer 2010
These advances, however, are not
cheap and it is going to get even more expensive for ships to stay environmentally friendly in the not-too-distant future as all vessels travelling within 200 nautical miles of the American and Canadian coasts will have to cut their fuel sulphur content by 98 per cent.
New rules, recently approved by the International Maritime Organisation, will be phased in from 2012, while new ships will have to use advanced pollution- control technology beginning in 2016. The problem for existing vessels is that this low-sulphur fuel is twice as expensive and the knock on effect in terms of costs for the cruise industry is likely to be signifi cant. When it comes to an individual’s quest for eco-cruising, the fi rst place to start is to look at a company’s website as many now have dedicated pages outlining their environmental efforts and qualifi cations. To fi nd out if you’re going to reduce
your carbon footsteps, see if your cruise line is a member of the Passenger Shipping Association or the American Cruise Lines
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92