Environmental impact of light-weight structures in marine applications

The need to enhance the marine industry’s energy efficiency and reduce environmental pollution leads to increasing attention in green design strategies, which include structural weight reduction, energy waste minimisation and increase in the share of recycling and structural reuse. One of the challenges for green structural design is the material used for marine construction, which should combine both light-weight properties and convenience in reuse and recycling. In this scenario, evaluating the environmental impact of existing marine structures and the choice of materials used for construction is one of the major governing factors in the design. The current study aims to yield an overview of the most common light-weight materials and structures for marine structural application and compare their environmental impact. The effect of structural enhancement in reducing the light-weight and sustainability is evaluated, and some conclusions on possible improvements for a “greener” light-weight marine structures are derived.