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The Global Cruise Industry: Cruising for an Environmental Bruising?

How do cruise ships manage waste?

It can be helpful to imagine a cruise ship as a floating city. Bluewater Network's report: 'Cruising for trouble', produced in 2000 analysed the environmental performance of the cruise industry and found a number of deeply worrying features and practices. The following analysis is drawn from that report:

Cruise ship waste streams

Characterising the industry's environmental record as 'dismal', Bluewater Network's publication cited a report from the US General Accounting Office which found that over a six year period in the 1990s, cruise ships were involved in 87 confirmed cases of illegal discharges of oil, rubbish and hazardous waste into US waters. The industry were fined in excess of $30 million in penalties for these activities.

Bluewater claims, though, that this was just a 'drop in the ocean'; the cruise industry is in fact responsible, they claim, for a far greater number of polluting offences than this headline figure reveals.

In addition to the 87 cases reported above, Bluewater says that there were 17 polluting offences that were passed for action to the countries in which the ships concerned were registered. Some of the topline number of incidents were actually multiple cases of illegal dumping that, in reality, numbered in the hundreds.

Discussing a case involving Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., Bluewater identified the following:

• the firm admitted to routinely dumping hazardous waste into several US harbours and coastal areas
• ships were fitted with secret piping systems which bypassed pollution treatment equipment
• investigators said there was a 'fleet-wide conspiracy' by the firm to use US waterways as its 'dumping ground'
• the company admitted its guilt in 21 pollution cases, covering 6 US states
• it paid a record total of $18 million in criminal fines

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