From the very first stages of obtaining materials and designing vessels to the operational and end-of-life phases of each ship, it’s becoming apparent that we need tools to assess the economical and environmental footprint of all shipbuilding activities. We need to take action to ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’, if the industry and its users want to continue to have access to essential materials and keep their commercial models future-proof.
In the greater Rotterdam region, companies, researchers, regulators and other stakeholders are working on new ways to come to a circular, ‘closed-loop’ system. With this system the entire lifecycle of a ship is monitored, which the industry can adapt to the current changes in market conditions, regulatory frameworks, and the availability of (raw) materials.
Cradle-to-cradle insights and environmental performance tools
In the video below Rosanne van Houwelingen, Innovation Project Manager at Netherlands Maritime Technology, the trade association of shipyards and maritime manufacturers, talks about one of the most promising projects: CirclesofLife.
Several organisations in the regional maritime ecosystem have joined this European project to collaborate on developing, testing and validating tools that, once completed, everyone in the supply chain can use to make their environmental footprint more measurable and transparent and structurally cut down on emissions.
