Freight transport by sea is by far the most environmentally friendly mode of transport (see graph).
Source: VDR – German Shipowners’ Association
An aircraft pollutes the environment with CO2 70 times more than a large container ship.
This environmental aspect is becoming increasingly important for our passengers. It was not only Sten Nadolny’s novel “The Discovery of Slowness” that raised awareness of a different kind of voyage. More and more of our customers use freighter voyages for slow and, compared to air travel, much more environmentally friendly voyages, or to “experience distances”.
There are many passengers who take advantage of a time-out, such as a sabbatical year, to visit a faraway continent by cargo ship or to make a world tour in stages without boarding a plane.
We are happy to help you with the realization of unusual travel destinations!
One of our customers, very fittingly in our opinion, described it as follows: “Freighter voyages are the deceleration of voyage”.
But we also want to praise our shipping companies, which have done a lot in recent years to make shipping more environmentally friendly. Here are just a few examples:
- “Slow Steaming” (slow driving with less fuel consumption)
- Shore power connection in port
- Biological sewage treatment plants on board
- Ballast water purification and treatment
- Environmentally friendly hull coatings
- Sulfur emission minimization
- Abandonment of heavy oil as fuel, use of marine diesel
- More and more ships install dry scrubbers for exhaust gas cleaning
- More and more ships with liquid gas (LNG) propulsion
- some ships are already operated with methanol
- Soon there will also be ships that run on hydrogen
- Strict rule: no garbage overboard
This list is only intended to show examples of how environmentally oriented the shipping companies we represent think.
One final sentence to think about:
“Our” ships operate to transport goods and merchandise. Taking passengers on board therefore does not cause any real environmental impact, unlike a cruise ship.