What are the things that cruise lines are doing
to improve the environmental impact of cruising?
I'm Gary Bembridge, this is another
of my tips for travellers.
There's no doubt that people, travellers everywhere,
are becoming more and more concerned
about the environmental impact of travel,
whether it's buses, whether it's trains,
whether it's flights,
and importantly, of course, whether it's cruising.
Cruising is growing, it's becoming more popular.
It's not going away, so what are the cruise lines doing
to address the environmental impact of ships
cruising all around the world?
There are six critical things that they are doing,
starting with this one.
The most important area that the cruise lines
are focusing on to reduce the issue of environmental impact
is in the area of carbon emissions
where the goal is to reduce carbon emissions
by 40% by 2030, and they're doing that
by using a whole range of things
that were not even possible ten years ago
and some even five years ago.
First of all, one of the most well-known things
is they use scrubbers.
Scrubbers are devices which attempt to take out most
of the bad things that are emitted
through burning fossil fuel,
so things like sulphur and particle matter.
60% of cruise ships today currently use scrubbers
and they can reduce sulphur by 98%,
particle matter by 50%.
There was some controversy around scrubbers
for a period of time because the process which uses water,
some of that was being released into the ocean
which is now largely not done by cruise ships
because of the potential knock-on effect
to the marine pollution.
The second thing, which is one
of the most significant changes,
is the change in fuels that they're using.
And there's a big drive to move to LNG, which is liquefied
natural gas, so that's still a fossil fuel,
but it is a dramatically better fossil fuel.
It has no dust, it has no soot, it has no particles.
And it can reduce sulphur emissions by another 99%,
so almost entirely, and it can dramatically reduce
nitrogen oxide emissions by up to 85%
compared to current fuels.
Two ships at the time of recording are already
in service using LNG, and there's 26 on order,
and a lot of the new ships now being ordered
by the big corporations, so Carnival Corporation,
Royal Caribbean, for example,
most of those new ships are LNG ships,
and they're using it across all of their brands.
This is seen as one of the most significant
and biggest changes is the change to LNG.
That's going to have a massive impact on carbon emissions.
However, there is another thing that people
are doing with fossil fuels.
And that's using ultra-low sulphur fuels.
So these are available.
They were largely used in very sensitive areas
so they might be used in some of the arctic areas,
sometimes in Alaska, and sometimes
up in the Norwegian fjords.
Some cruise lines are starting to only use these fuels.
So I guess they're more expensive,
which is what's holding people back,
but if you take Hapag-Lloyd, for example,
the German-based cruise line which is ultra luxury,
from 2020 they will only use ultra-low sulphur fuels
across their entire fleet.
So that is another way that cruise lines
are starting to address it, so LNG is the big push,
and ultra-low sulphur marine oil is the other.
There are two other really interesting innovations.
Hurtigruten, for example, at the time of recording,
has just launched a jewel fuel system
which uses battery power and marine oil,
so jewel fuel, a bit like cars increasingly using
both electric and petrol, that's a big initiative.
The other thing which Hurtigruten are doing,
which is very interesting is moving to biofuel,
so this is looking at using natural products,
so for example, the waste from the fish industry
to turn those into fuel to motor their ships.
So you've got jewel fuel and increasingly biofuel
being used by some cruise lines.
The fifth bunch of technology that cruise lines
are using is a really interesting one,
and this is through the use of very special paints
on the hull, but also technology which, I think,
was originally introduced by Royal Caribbean,
which blows bubbles along the hull to reduce the drag,
and that makes a huge difference
in the amount of fuel that's burned.
Because the ships can move much more efficiently
through, so there's lots of technology
around the designs of the hulls,
and how you can make the hulls more streamlined,
through bubble technology, paint technology
to make the ships just more efficient and burn less fuel.
The sixth area is a really important one,
and it's particularly around ports.
So if ships are in port all day, which they normally are,
they are, of course, if they're using fossil fuels,
burning and having emissions.
So what the move is, is to move to ships
literally plugging in to shoreside
So at the moment, it's relatively restricted
but increasingly ships are being developed or converted
so they can actually plug into the electric system
and electric grid in the ports.
At the time of recording, there were 30% of cruise ships
fitted with this capability, and there was a whole bunch,
about 20% being refitted, and almost all of the new ships
that are being built are fitted with these new systems.
So plug-in power imports is a key way of improving
the air quality in port towns.
So those are the six ways that cruise lines are focusing
on the most important issue of reducing carbon emissions.
The second area the cruise lines are focusing on
to reduce their environmental impact is one that gets
the most publicity and practise,
and that's the reduction of single-use plastics,
like so many people are trying to do generally.
Manufacturers and people around the world are trying
to reduce single-use plastics.
Most cruise lines have now moved away from using straws.
Either you have to ask for a straw
or increasingly they're moving to recyclable
or straws that can be basically combustible.
So that's the most visible thing,
the thing that gets talked about the most.
The most cruise lines are also removing things like
the little, small toiletry bottles that you get
to have big refillable bottles or pump dispensers.
They're also doing things like getting rid of water bottles,
plastic water bottles, used to be given
when you went on excursions or in your room.
They're replacing them with glass bottles
or refillable bottles.
And they're providing their own water,
which they're making onboard, sometimes partnering
with various ecowater generating systems.
So trying to get rid of lots of plastic water bottles.
The stats, when you hear how many plastic bottles
were used in cruise ships, is quite staggering.
So they're starting to get rid of some of those things
in the customer-facing areas.
For example, on the most recent cruise I was on,
on Oceania, you don't get little plastic lids anymore
on the cups, wooden stirrers, not plastic stirrers.
So all those customer-facing things.
But also what they're trying to do in the supply chain,
like many manufacturers and supermarkets are doing,
is getting rid of as much single-use plastics as possible,
of course, because plastic in the ocean is a huge issue,
and it's something that the industry
is trying to really get rid of, single-use plastics.
The third area that cruise lines are focusing on
to improve their environmental impact is
in the area of recycling.
Now for quite a long time, cruise ships
have been pretty good on the recycling area
but they have become even more aggressive.
Onboard every single cruise ship
you'll have an environmental officer,
and if you're on a cruise, I recommend you actually
try and meet with them or go on the tours that they run.
It's claimed that on a cruise ship,
we'll do 60 to 80% more recycling
than a person will do at home.
And everything on the ship is really sorted
and structured, because bear in mind,
if you're on a cruise ship
they have to do something with it.
So what they do now is they collect all the glass,
they sort the glass, the cardboard, the paper,
and they basically then sort that and package it up,
grind it down and when they head into port,
they sell it on or move it on to recycling,
so there's a lot of recycling
going onboard the cruise ship.
And of course because they have to do it
because of all the regulations
about what you can and can't put in the ocean,
they have become very regimented at recycling.
The fifth area is around water.
So bear in mind the cruise ships are actually allowed
to dispose of treated water into the ocean
at their certain speed and distance out.
Also if you process sewage, the same thing applies.
They have to treat sewage to a very high level
before it can be released into the ocean.
Now that is not a maritime law,
that is a cruise line association rule.
But what cruise lines have done is they've moved
to really advanced water processing systems,
so they're able to generate water, process water,
treat water so that it's very high-grade
before they put it into the ocean.
In some cases, of course, it is also off-loaded in port.
But they basically treat the water to very high levels
so when it goes back into the ocean,
it is not going to cause any damage within the ocean.
And this is something that's become very regulated
and strong rules within the cruise line association.
So advanced water systems have now been brought
on many, many ships and all new ships
have that whole process.
The sixth area that cruise lines are focusing on
is one that I think probably personally,
there's still a lot of work to be done.
And this is the whole area of responsible and overtourism.
Anyone who's been on a cruise,
particularly to some parts of Europe or the Caribbean,
will know that the towns and places can be extremely overrun
by travellers whether it's from big cruise ships
or even on river cruises.
So lots of cruises are pouring out into places
that can't really cope.
And the industry is starting to do more and more work
around overtourism, so they're working, for example,
with the mayor of Dubrovnik,
they're working with the Venice authorities,
because that's the place that gets really overrun,
places like Santorini so it could have the cruise ships
can arrive, stagger times, different times,
trying to get travellers who are on cruises
to sort of head out from the obvious places
and spread both the impact and the money
further out into the country
and the areas that they're travelling in.
It's an area that, I think, needs a lot more work,
but certainly something that the cruise line association's
understanding they need to do much more work on.
The one thing they are doing,
and we've seen quite a lot of progress on,
is partnering with big important organisations
to basically make more of an impact.
So, for example, some of the ones
that are worth noting are as follows.
The Carnival Corporation, they support
the Nature's Conservation's Mapping Oceanwealth Programme.
Seabourn have a partnership with UNESCO
which helps invest in heritage sites, World Heritage Sites
and responsible tourism around those sites.
Royal Caribbean has a partnership
with the World Wildlife Fund to try and help educate
the cruiser and also help fund programmes
to support wildlife and the environment and nature.
And MSC Cruises partners with Marevivo
which is an Italian marine conservation association.
So whilst I think there's progress being made,
I think there's a lot of work to be done
over the next couple of years by the cruise industry
to really focus on the area of environmental impact
and overtourism.
Cruising, of course, does have a big impact
on the environment like many forms of transportation do.
The cruise industry know that they have to address that
and become better at doing it.
So those are the six things that they're currently doing
to try and improve the impact they have on the environment.
I have many more cruise tips for travellers.
So why don't you watch
another one of those videos right now.