Your Cruise Your Way Cruise Blog

While striving to become one of the bigger players in the world’s cruise market with the building of its two new ships, MSC Fantasia and MSC Splendida, MSC Cruises has taken great strides to be mindful of the environment as well. MSC Cruises is introducing Comfort Class, its way to safeguard the environment and offer guests optimum comfort. Now if you cruise on MSC, you not only will be treated like royalty, and enjoy the finest food and entertainment in Europe, but you can also know that you are not harming the world around you from an environmental perspective.

Both vessels will be equipped with the most modern ecological technology:
• AWT-Advanced Water Treatment: The water treatment system is able to convert black and grey water according to the most rigorous laws currently in operation. This allows the ships to reutilize recycled water for technical use such as the decks and hygiene services. This will reduce the use of fresh water and allows the ship to discharge it into the sea without anything that is harmful to the sea. There will be storage units on board to contain black and grey water for a few days, thus allowing the ships to travel longer distances before having to stop at a port of call.
• Energy Saving: This system is installed in all guest staterooms. It will conserve electricity and reduce usage in the accommodation areas hence reducing gas emissions that provoke the greenhouse effect. The system will disable certain lights (principal lights, bathroom lights, electrical plugs and hairdryers) when the stateroom is unoccupied, thereby reducing energy consumption by 30%. Guests returning to their staterooms only need to insert their cruise card in the appropriate slot to restore all these services. Energy Saving will also be installed in the public spaces, making a noticeable savings on energy consumption by 25% throughout the ship when facilities are not used.
• Stateroom Monitoring System: Installed for the first time on a cruise ship of such dimension, this system is able to continuously control the temperature of each stateroom and maintain it at a steady level without unnecessary energy use. Thanks to this new technology the temperature in the staterooms will be regulated digitally by the room thermostat with a pre-programmed minimum and maximum room temperature setting. This also will be linked to the Energy Saving system and the system that regulates open and closed stateroom doors or windows – the air conditioner will automatically be on stand-by mode or will diminish the air conditioning intensity every time the stateroom window is open.
MSC Fantasia and MSC Splendida will be the diamonds in the MSC Cruises fleet, particularly when it comes to safeguarding the environment. MSC Cruises has been awarded the Certificate ISO 14001 Environmental Protection from the Bureau Veritas.
Due to the company’s interest in the environment, the Mayor of Venice Massimo Cacciari awarded MSC Cruises the “Venice Blue Flag.” MSC Cruises is one of the first to support this project, which controls the emissions of the ships transiting the Venice lagoon.
In 2007 and as a result of an agreement with CIAL (Consorzio Nazionale per il Recupero e il Riccio dell’Alluminio), a special process has been implemented with regard to the collection and recycling of aluminium on board MSC Orchestra and sister ship MSC Musica. During the next few months, this process will be extended to all the ships in the MSC Cruises fleet.
The same applies to the new “smoking policy.” Following a lengthy analysis of the opinions expressed by guests, there are now designated smoking areas on board all the MSC Cruises ships.
These areas are located both inside and outside. Smoking is permitted in the cigar rooms and the casinos and in one section of the sun/pool deck area.