Uniworld has initiated an environmental sustainability project which encourages cruise lines to better protect the world’s rivers.
UNIWORLD Boutique River Cruises and its non-profit arm, TreadRight, have produced a an industry-first guide of strategies to reduce water and energy use and waste generation on river cruise ships.
The move aims to catch up with ocean cruising, which has invested heavily in “greener cruising” over the past decade.
Speaking exclusively to Cruise Weekly from Los Angeles, the line’s president Guy Young said it was time for river cruise operators to take action.
“The big ships do a lot of work collectively to protect the world’s oceans but there is not the same focus on the river cruising side, so this is the first step to get the industry to take more notice of the rivers we cruise on.
“It’s important to ensure sustainable river cruising, considering how fast it’s growing.”
Young said that the sector’s recent rapid growth had its benefits.
“Standards are getting better and the newer vessels are more efficient and advanced in their water recycling and waste management,” he said.
Egypt is top of Young’s list for improvements.
“With almost 300 river cruise ships on the Nile, you can have six of them tied up in Luxor, giving off fumes, so there is huge potential to improve the environment in Egypt,” he said.
“But even in Europe, there is so much more that we could be doing.”
The best practices offered in the guide, which provides training materials to help companies implement the recommendations, come from investigations of environmental performance and management collected through audits on 12 Uniworld ships in Egypt and Europe.
The sixty-page guide, ‘Environmental Sustainability for River Cruising’, can be downloaded from the Travel Foundation website at www.thetravelfoundation.org.uk.
