Offsetting our cruise

 


When I posted online about how wonderful our cruise to nowhere was with Royal Caribbean, someone in the comments said they won't take cruises because of the environmental impact of cruises. My response was that we're triple offsetting everything. Which means when we travel we offset ourselves, somebody else in board who is ignorant to the problem, and an idiot politician who can do something about it but isn't.

Even with Royal Caribbean's environmental programs reducing their emissions dramatically, we choose to also offset our impacts.

So by us travelling the planet is better off than if we didn't.

And once everything else is offset for climate positive living, then life can be lived from a position of climate consistency rather than pointing with one hand and spoiling with the other - something I've been trying to avoid. In other words if I'm using aircon and not offsetting, then I'm part of the problem. So we offset our cruise.

Here's my research:

I learned that each passenger contributes 0.82 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per cruise. Source: https://www.tourismdashboard.org/explore-the-data/cruise-ship/

While I don't know how long their standard cruise is - I've been on 14 days cruises and this was a 3-night cruise - I'm using their 0.82 as being a 3-night cruise. If I over offset that's ok.

Then I use my calculations from my flight-offsetting article where I calculated that I need to plant 18 trees to offset a tonne of CO2. And since I'm triple offsetting, that's 54 trees per tonne. So 0.82 tonnes needs 44.28 trees planted to triple offset me. And since our family unit was 3 people, we need to offset our cruise emissions by planting 132.84 fruit trees.

I did some nonsense rounding along the way and ended up planting 136 trees using the Impact Now app by B1G1.com. It cost me 40 cents a tree (USD) and so the total was US$ 54.40. It's simple to do and makes a big impact to the environment, the villagers where the trees are planted in Kenya by the Mango Tree Orphan Support Trust, and the beneficiaries of the food and income from the fruit of the trees too.

And because we did this, the fact that we sailed was better for the environment than if we hadn't.

Offsetting is simple. It makes a difference. And it increases awareness. All while helping people in need. You can do it too.

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