TIL shipping one container across the ocean pollutes as much as 50 cars driving for a year

I was reading through some random climate stats on a site called Our World in Data last night. They broke down emissions per container ship trip, and I had to double check the math a few times. Turns out a single big cargo vessel can burn through 150 tons of bunker fuel a day, which is basically the dirtiest stuff left on the planet. Has anyone else looked into what shipping companies are actually doing to clean this up?

2 comments

2 Comments

jennifersmith2h ago

That robert64 mentioned LNG is interesting, but heres something I dug into a few months back - most shipping companies actually run their engines on heavy fuel oil even when they say theyre going green, because switching to cleaner fuels drops their cargo capacity by like 10 percent. Take that stat with a grain of salt though, it was from a pretty niche maritime blog.

robert645h ago

Whoa, that's wild. I remember reading that same stat and it stuck with me too. Some of the big lines are switching to LNG now, but it's still way behind where it needs to be.