Green Shipping Practices: Benefits, Challenges and Strategies

Abstract

Maritime shipping is the main driver of international trade and global supply chains (Dulebenets, 2022). Maritime shipping is responsible for transporting approximately 90% of the global trade volume (Chang, 2022). Meanwhile, maritime shipping releases greenhouse gas and discharges wastewater, oil, sewage, and garbage, adversely affecting lives on land and in the air and sea (Shi et al., 2018; Vural et al., 2021). Maritime shipping accounts for about 3% of greenhouse gas emissions; this number is estimated to double or even triple by 2050 if emissions continue unabated (Trapp et al., 2020; Tran et al., 2020). Greenhouse gas emissions from maritime shipping increased from 977 million tonnes in 2012 to 1,076 million tonnes in 2018 (Mackenzie, 2022). This indicates that maritime shipping, though cleaner and safer than air and road transport, has contributed significantly to global warming and climate change. Global warming and climate change have escalated a conversation among governments, international organizations, non-governmental organizations, and researchers to coerce and incentivize firms, including those in the shipping industry, to adopt green initiatives (Yuen et al., 2017; Wan et al., 2018; Yang, 2018). For this reason, International Maritime Organisation has set an ambitious target of minimising greenhouse gas emissions from maritime transport by 50% by 2050 to contribute toward achieving global sustainable development (de Oliveira et al., 2022). In response, shipping firms have adopted green practices to curb the adverse impact of their operations on people and the planet (Altarriba et al., 2022). Green shipping practices align with International Maritime Organisation’s MARPOL 73/78, an environmental convention to prevent air and marine pollution resulting from shipping (Koutsouradi et al., 2022). Green shipping practices are innovative initiatives developed/adopted in shipping firms to achieve minimal health and ecological damage through waste reduction and resource conservation in handling and distributing cargo (Shi et al., 2018). Green shipping practices involve environmentally friendly technologies, recycling and reusing shipping materials and equipment, using renewable energy, and recovering or recycling waste (Ballini and Bozzo, 2015). Green shipping practices are widely believed to be efficient in controlling pollution emissions and achieving a low-carbon green economy (Jozef et al., 2019). Green shipping practices can offer several economic, social, and environmental benefits but are not without challenges (Altarriba et al., 2022).