4 4 Hurtigruten Expeditions is keen to continue investing in green products for use onboard its ships. “We are always looking for more sustainable or natural material, including upcycled options – and it does not start or stop there,” says Thomas Westergaard, vice president of hotel operations. The story is the same for Scotland’s Pentland Ferries. “We are committed to environmental efficiencies and using sustainable materials wherever possible across our entire operation,” says Kathryn Scollie, director of Pentland Ferries. Meanwhile, Variety Cruises aims to continually enhance its practices until it has created a fleet of green ships. “Our passionate team of sustainability-driven individuals continue to strive towards more sustainable design so we can turn our fleet into a true eco-fleet through a phased programme,” says Constantine Venetopoulos, director of Variety Cruises. Steve Born, chief marketing officer for Avalon Waterways and the Globus family of brands, also predicts that “future ship design will play a major role as we look to new and innovative ways to lessen environmental impact, including options for electric power sources and sustainable fuels.” Challenges ahead Despite the positive impact of advances made in the delivery and operation of more sustainable interiors there remains much to do. Designers currently have insufficient choice and variety in sustainable product and material ranges, and even where there is a reasonable selection, they are limited by other barriers, such as the lower colour intensity that can be achieved with natural dyes. This will change when sustainable suppliers are increasingly rewarded with good sales volumes. Identifying truly sustainable products can also be challenging. Proud claims and shiny ecolabels can mask the true environmental cost and specifiers find it difficult to validate eco-metrics. There are over 450 ecolabels in use, many of which can be achieved without making any environmental improvements. This problem could be overcome if the industry identified and adopted a limited selection of recognised certifications. As the old adage goes, time costs money. And it takes a great deal of time to wade through the process of seeking out comparable alternatives to less environmentally friendly products. There are two obvious solutions here – either give designers the budget to fund this time or build a global catalogue of sustainable products that are IMO-certified or otherwise qualified for a life at sea. The world continues to deplete precious raw materials at an astonishing pace. And the environmental cost of digging them out of the ground and turning them into products for our pleasure is immense. While we cannot completely solve this dichotomy, the development and deployment of biomaterials like grape waste, silica fire coatings, bioplastics and aerogels will have a profound impact. Waste is likely the biggest and most pressing challenge of all. Every construction and consumption-centred industry fears it and toils to reduce it, or in some cases just hide it. While passenger shipping is open about this challenge, it remains a major obstacle to significant environmental improvement. Part of the solution lies in the greater adoption of life cycle strategies and another part through working with yards and governments to find ways to make it easier to reuse materials coming off ships during refurbishment projects. And there are many more, but we must not dedicate all of our energies to solving the big challenges, baby steps are important too. Finding a way to incorporate an extra one per cent of recycled material into a new carpet, adding a day to the life of a chair or reducing a fraction of the necessary chemical content in adhesives are all valuable advances. These and other small steps might not get loudly praised by the public, but they will be crucial to saving the planet. CFI 2022 REPORT Sustainable Maritime Interiors Building and maintaining sustainable passenger ship interiors is a complex challenge, but key stakeholders across the industry are working hard to develop innovative new products and services to develop greener vessels. Cruise & Ferry’s forthcoming Sustainable Maritime Interiors report will explore this topic, sharing exclusive insights from more than 180 contributors across all interior disciplines to highlight how the sector is working together to accelerate the pace of environmental change in the years ahead. We hear from executives at cruise and ferry brands, designers, outfitters, representatives from the supplier community and many others. The report will be released at the sustainability conference session at Cruise Ship Interiors Expo in Miami, Florida, in June 2022. Readers can also download a digital version at: www.cruiseandferry.net/digital/ magazine/sustainable-maritime-interiors-2022 Sustainable Maritime Interiors
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NzQ1NTk=