Consumption

Last spring this ship took on sustainability and conservation as a goal. The ship now tracks a variety of energy related items. It is astounding when you are on a self contained vessel how much gets used and produced each and everyday. I do try to practice recycling but honestly not allot else. We as a people are beyond that.
I was talking to a professor "Rocky" about the wind farm for Nantucket sound. He said he thinks we need to go to the basics before putting windfarms in asteticlly prime areas. What he meant was that if people would buy energy efficent refridgerators , seal drafty spots around windows, buy longlife energy efficent lightbulbs and other simple things like that our need for the windfarms in Nantucket sound ' and areas like it would be less.
The US is way behind the rest of the world w/ regard to sustainable energy, wind, solar. We are making strides . The majority of the windfarms could be put in middle America in the farmland - steady wind. The farmers can grow around the turbines and reap the benefits of leasing land that would occupy the windmill.
All energy produced goes to the GRID for the most part. So if you have a windfarm in Kansas you might share the energy on Cape Cod and visa versa .
I just thought the train of thought was interesting.
One thing looked at closely on the EXplorer is water consumption:
On average we use about 59 gallons per person per day or 56,797 total gallons of water used per day on the ship . The EXPLORER can produce its own water (desalinisation) using reverse osmosos. This is expensive to do as it takes energy to produce and thus fuel. The ship has 4 engines all over 11,000 horsepower. 45,000 HORSEPOWER total. Of the fuel we use only 60% goes to propultion the rest to other tasks , like water generation.
We take short showers use little water for brushing shaving etc.

It kind of opens ons eyes. More on this later, think of the trash created by 1000+ people.

best from Cadiz
JD