Spring Break Cruise (Part 2)

This week is dedicated to adding more details to my analysis of the cruise. I’ve broken the total carbon footprint into four pieces: ship operation, land transportation, food, and drinks. The total footprint (detailed below) is 778 kg CO2eq, equivalent to driving 1,840 miles in my car.

Ship Operation: In the last post, I discussed three possible carbon footprints related to the ship itself via a carbon calculator (1.1 tonnes), the 2015 Carnival Sustainability Report (0.8 tonnes), and the 2008 Carnival Environmental Management Report (4.8 tonnes). For the rest of the analysis, I’m going to use the 0.8 tonne (1700 miles in my car) estimate; while my intuition suggests this is a low estimate, it’s based on the most recent data specific to Carnival.

Land Transportation: To travel to and from the ship, my friend and I were dropped off and picked up in Galveston. In total, the two 104 mile round trips (one to drop off and one to pick up) in a 2005.5 Mazda 3 (approx. 26 mpg) split between two people equates to 36 kg CO2eq (84 miles in my car).

Food: Of all of the delicious food on the ship, the largest carbon impacts are associated with the meat I consumed on board. I estimate that the beef, pork, and salmon I ate on the ship represents about 19 kg CO2eq (45 miles in my car).

Drinks: According to this study, the carbon impacts of alcohol are pretty small; in this case, the impacts are negligible in comparison to fuel and food consumption.