Ecopship Sustainable Cruising Vessel

It’s a dilemma most travelers face: how to indulge the wanderlust without leaving too much of an environmental footprint. Unless we are prepared to walk the earth, literally, we may still be a long way away from totally carbon-neutral traveling. However, this week humanity just took one giant leap forward to propel the hopes for genuinely green travel. As Kennedy (2017) points out in this CNN article, Japan and Finland are collaborating on the world’s most sustainable cruising vessel. Called the “Ecoship,” the cruise boat could radically transform the tourism industry and inspire other companies with strong ethical visions of corporate social and environmental responsibility.
The Japanese company behind the Ecoship is called Peace Boat. Peace Boat has been running educational cruises for some time, already promoting a type of responsible tourism based not on how many silly selfies you can take in front of the Eifel Tower, but on what traveling can teach us, and how traveling can transform our lives. Yes, Peace Boat is the real deal. When we travel responsibly and consciously, we create opportunities for sustainable economic development around the world. The Peace Boat model is admirable because it connects the educated and curious traveler with opportunities for transformative learning experiences.
As much as I would love for Peace Boat to offer me free passage in exchange for writing a blog post telling people about how awesome they are, I’m going to let you in on a secret. Shhhhhh, I don’t actually like cruises. Cruise ships have long been one of the most insidious and wasteful types of tourism out there. The cruise ship model is wasteful—have you ever seen how much food they throw away? Cruise ships guzzle gas and dump waste into the sea. They also encourage the type of tourism that we can all do without: the boatloads of tourist hoards descending upon destinations and in many cases, ruining them forever. As an aside, I really do hope Venice takes a stand and bans cruise ships from the lagoon.
It is about time the industry changed to reflect the values of the new generations seeking more ethical ways of traveling. We need more sustainable tourism, even if for now only the wealthy can afford it. I personally do not know if I will go aboard the Ecoship (unless they would like for me to write a blog post for them in exchange for room and board, then we can talk...), particularly given the hefty price tag of a cabin on board. According to Kennedy, the standard Peace Boat cruises are between $15,000 and $18,000, but there is no word yet how much a ride on the Ecoship will cost.
Priced out of range for most ordinary travelers, the Ecoship also raises some important questions about the accessibility of “green” products and services. Given that big ticket items like these can set standards or trends, leading to a sort of trickle-down greening effect, it is better to have an expensive Ecoship than to not have anything at all. Perhaps Richard Branson could be the next new innovator, transforming the aviation industry by releasing the first Ecoplane! I hope I am around for when that happens. In the meantime, I’ll do my best to reduce my environmental footprint when traveling by opting for ethical choices in where I choose to stay and what mode of transportation I take.
For now, I might prefer good old fashioned backpacking to a cruise ship, but when Ecoship starts sailing in 2020, you can bet I’ll be on the lookout for messages in my Inbox warmly welcoming me aboard out of thanks for pimping their fresh new ride.




References

Kennedy, E. (2017). The world’s greenest cruise ship will have sails. CNN Tech. 11 Dec, 2017. http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/11/technology/green-cruise-ship-ecoship/index.html