Trans RINA, Vol 154, Part C1, Intl J Marine Design, Jan - Jun 2012
builders have realized the need to rethink the basics of navigation.
All sectors of the maritime industries are affected by this environmental wave. For EcoNav it is important that they all work together. Indeed, many issues are cross-sectional (materials, equipment, energy, behavior …) and require a common effort for their solution.
For two years, thanks to the expertise of a working group of fifteen players, EcoNav has been able to analyse and list
various sustainable solutions through scalable
technical specifications [2]. This work aims to lay the groundwork for a future environmental label for leisure boats.
EcoNav wants to convince the entire maritime sector to move towards sustainable development, to discuss and include environmental aspects at different levels for any type of boat and any type of navigation.
One problem today is the lack of evaluation of the impacts of human activities on the environment, an another is the lack of solutions. EcoNav is there to link people
looking for specific information to develop programs, ideas, solutions.
4. PRESENTATION OF THE APPROACH OF ECO-DESIGN
Among these solutions we find eco-design. Eco-
conception involves consideration of the environmental impact of a product from its conception as it is important to act as early as possible in order to have a real preventive approach [3].
4.1 WHAT IS ECO-DESIGN?
When we talk about eco-design, we must not only think of materials, energy, or propulsion.
Many companies are working on reducing waste and packaging, the economics of transport, use at end of life or simply the disposal of materials. Eco-design is not a revolution in itself but rather an effective way to reduce costs while impacting less on the environment.
Reducing impact does not only mean to substitute one pollutant by another, less aggressive to the environment. When a company engages in eco-design, each choice along the chain of designing a product or a service is translated into environmental impact by
specified
indicators. The aim is thus to reduce the impact of a choice without transferring the impact to another choice along the chain. Thus it is possible to substitute a polluting raw material (petroleum based for example) by a material of plant origin. But this is not so simple.
Figure 1: Analysing of ship life cycle C-12 ©2012: The Royal Institution of Naval Architects
4.2 HOW TO DO ECO-DESIGN? Different
levels of eco-design are possible. There are
different tools, but there is no magic formula. The company must first ask why and what is the utility for its market (customer, competition, regulation), but also how to act and on what criteria.
Today there are a multitude of standards; two of them are new and will be published in France in 2011. They will deal with eco-design in the management of the company. There are also various tools that can be classified according to qualitative or quantitative standards and there is a multi-criteria or a single-criterion approach (often the inclusion of CO²). In the world of sailing, Life Cycle Analysis is the method most used. LCA is an environmental assessment method that quantifies the impact of a product (whether it is goods, service or a process) on its entire life cycle, from extraction of raw materials that compose it to disposal at end of life, through the phases of distribution and use. LCA, a standardized
accomplished method in terms of overall assessment of material flows and energy associated with each stage of product life cycle, expressed as potential impacts on the environment.
4.3 HEADING FOR 'SUSTAINABLE' MATERIALS
When we calculate the overall environmental footprint of a boat, we observe that materials and construction techniques have a strong impact on the environment. To assess the real impact of a material, a comprehensive analysis, objective and serious is needed. For this, several criteria must be taken into account: type of material, origin, availability, weight, durability, recyclability, toxicity, energy used for the extraction, the transport and the processing of materials, etc. (figure 1).
and recognized tool, is the most
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