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Investigation of green practices for paper use reduction onboard a cruise ship—a life cycle approach

  • LIFE CYCLE MANAGEMENT
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Abstract

Purpose

The aim of this paper is to analyse the potential green practices that can be adopted onboard a cruise ship in order to enhance the environmental performance of the cruise with particular attention to paper input and output flows in a waste minimization perspective.

Methods

A comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) of management scenarios of paper streams onboard a cruise ship is performed. The potential environmental impacts due to three strategic choices about paper and paper waste management onboard a case-study ship have been investigated through a so-called difference analysis, i.e. the digitalization of the daily information journal Today, the reduction of toilet paper and paper towels through the installation of auto-cut single extraction dispensers and the reduction of printing paper through dissemination of specific guidelines. In order to compare each scenario with the reference case in absence of the practice implementation, the functional unit in this study has been defined as 1 day of cruise.

Results and discussion

The implementation of the analysed green practices show comparable environmental benefits onboard a pilot ship, on the basis the set of assumptions and hypothesis identified in this simulation. In particular, when comparing the potential GHG emission reductions, it results that the two most realistically feasible scenarios in the communication area, i.e. digitalization of 25 and 50 % shares of Today journal, show environmental savings comparable to measures related to reduction of consumables and guidelines for personnel. Nevertheless, the addition of a reasonable number of touch-screen devices for this purpose would not significantly influence the environmental impacts.

Conclusions

A set of reduction measures of paper items onboard a cruise ship is able to both avoid the impacts related to production and incineration stages. In the form of forecast scenarios, the results of such modelization may represent a set of indicators to be considered in a feasibility analysis prior to selection of the green practices to be introduced, as a support to decisions for cruise managers.

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Acknowledgments

This work has been co-funded by the European Commission LIFE+ Programme through the project Sustainable Cruise—prototypes and approaches for raising the waste hierarchy on board and certifying it. The content of this work reflects exclusively the authors’ view; the European Commission is not liable for any use of the information contained here. The authors wish to thank the partners of this project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. DICCA (Department of Civil, Chemical and Environmental Engineering), University of Genoa, Via all’Opera Pia 15, 16145, Genoa, Italy

    Carlo Strazza, Adriana Del Borghi, Michela Gallo & Roberta Manariti

  2. Design Innovation s.r.l., Viale Abruzzi 13, 20131, Milan, Italy

    Emanuela Missanelli

Authors
  1. Carlo Strazza
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  2. Adriana Del Borghi
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  3. Michela Gallo
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  4. Roberta Manariti
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  5. Emanuela Missanelli
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Carlo Strazza.

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Responsible editor: Shabbir Gheewala

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Strazza, C., Del Borghi, A., Gallo, M. et al. Investigation of green practices for paper use reduction onboard a cruise ship—a life cycle approach. Int J Life Cycle Assess 20, 982–993 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-015-0900-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-015-0900-0

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