By
Alex Smith |
MSC Group’s cruise division has joined the Green Marine Europe Label, a voluntary certification programme intended to allow shipowners to demonstrate their environmental performance in Europe.
MSC’s brands MSC Cruises and Explora Journeys will measure their environmental performance annually and use the Green Marine Europe Label’s programme guidelines to track progress against eight key performance indicators. These include aquatic invasive species, sulphur oxides and particulate matter emissions, nitrogen oxides emissions, greenhouse gas emissions, oily discharge, waste management, underwater noise, and responsible ship recycling.
The two brands will submit their annual environmental performance results to an external accredited verification party and then publish them.
“Even while we tackled the many challenges of the past two years, we never lost sight of our responsibilities in the long term,” said Pierfrancesco Vago, executive chairman of the cruise division of MSC Group. “In line with our commitment to sustainability and our pledge to reach net zero emissions by 2050, the Green Marine Europe Label will help us demonstrate our progress and share this with our guests, the communities that we serve and all other stakeholders.”
The Green Marine Europe Label is the result of a partnership of the North American environmental certification programme Green Marine, which has been operational for 10 years, and the Surfrider Foundation, a non-governmental organisation focused on ocean and maritime protection in the European Union. The partnership was established in 2019, and the programme was launched in spring 2020.