Murky waters: the hidden environmental impacts of your cruise

Those selling cruise holidays promise pristine waters, cloudless skies and sunny ports of call. Environmentally speaking, however, ocean travel can be a dicey proposition: every year, the industry consumes millions of tons of fuel and produces almost a billion tons of sewage. If insufficiently treated, exhaust and sewage from ships can fog the air and pollute the water, potentially causing a host of ugly environmental and health effects that undermine the very natural beauty that cruise ships advertise to potential travelers.

Some cruise lines are more environmentally conscious than others. For the past five years, one of the best resources for travelers – and cruise lines – interested in sustainable cruise travel has been Friends of the Earth’s (FOE) annual report card, which rates several cruise lines on their commitments to air pollution reduction, sewage treatment and water quality. Unlike the sustainability reports produced by individual lines – which can hard to find, hard to read and hard to correlate – FOE’s report card offers a clear, apples-to-apples comparison that makes it easy for consumers to find the most responsible vacation bet.

Last year, however, the cruise industry announced that it planned to stop working with FOE. In a letter sent in July to Marcy Keever, FOE’s oceans and vessels program director, Christine Duffy, CEO of the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) said that although the “cruise industry fully supports the preservation of the oceans in which cruise ships travel and the destinations they visit”, it questions FOE’s methodology. According to the letter, FOE’s report card “does not advance the public’s understanding in a meaningful or objective manner.”

While the letter stated that individual cruise lines were allowed to make their own decisions about cooperating with FOE, none of the 16 lines that eventually made it onto the report card submitted their data to the group. In response, FOE introduced a fourth rating category – transparency – which addresses a cruise line’s willingness to divulge information about its environmental record. Unsurprisingly, every cruise line failed the transparency test.

‘We had a dialogue’

While the report card is mainly aimed at environmentally conscious travelers, it’s also a useful tool for cruise lines hoping to benchmark their environmental efforts. Keever notes, for example, that Disney cruises received failing grades on FOE’s first two report cards, but has since worked hard to improve its environmental record. “Last year, they received our first ever A,” she says.

In fact, until last year, the cruise ship industry cooperated closely with FOE to produce the list. “They’ve been very good about getting back to us and telling us about their standards,” Keever says. “We’d request information and, for the last two years, they responded with all the information that we asked for. We had a dialogue.”

In the absence of this give-and-take, FOE has had to seek out other sources for information. Some data, Keever says, is available online, or can be found in state and federal government filings – and some is available from companies that install shipboard systems. She admits, however, that the database may not be as accurate as it would be with industry cooperation.

“It would be in the industry’s favor to let us know if we are wrong about certain ships lacking technology upgrades,” she says. “It has only benefited the industry in the past when they have responded to our survey.”

Hiding behind an industry organization

When asked about its refusal to cooperate with FOE, one cruise line responded that the report was “unscientific”, “a complete fabrication” and – because of the cruise line boycott – “has absolutely no research behind it”. That said, the line’s representative also stated that it, like many other cruise lines, publishes an annual sustainability report, which – not incidentally – contains most of the information that FOE used for its analysis.

The appeal to annual sustainability reports was a common refrain. Disney, which FOE has repeatedly honored as the most sustainable cruise line, joined in the boycott. Asked why, Disney representative Jacqueline Lorenzetti said: “Extensive information about our environmental practices is available on our public website.”

Most cruise lines were far from forthcoming when asked to speak on the record. Bottom-ranked Costa Cruises and parent company Carnival Corporation & PLC, which owns some of the top and bottom-ranked cruise lines, both quoted from CLIA’s letter, stating that the organization’s members are “leaders in the maritime community for environmental stewardship” and claiming that “environmental performance information is publicly and transparently available”.

Battle lines

CLIA representative Elinor Boeke and Carnival Cruise Line representative Michele Andjel both questioned FOE’s focus on sewage treatment. By law, ships can dump treated sewage anywhere. To dump raw sewage, however, they must be twelve miles out to sea. CLIA’s Boeke attested that its members’ ships actually go beyond the letter of the law, and treat all their sewage “in accordance with international regulations, prior to discharge”.

“What they’re saying is true,” Keever says. “But I would dispute that the basic legal guidelines are sufficient to protect the safety of the areas where these cruise ships travel.”

She notes that most sanitation standards are 35 years old, and don’t represent current understanding about the effects of dumping under-treated sewage in a closed system like an ocean.

Treated sewage might not be as safe as the cruise lines claim. According to a 2009 report by the US Environmental Protection Agency: “Traditional Type II [marine sanitation devices] routinely fail to treat sewage to meet the current EPA standards and are inadequate to protect US waters.”

In a 2000 study, only one of 70 samples met the required standards for fecal coliform and suspended solids. By comparison, Keever says, advanced wastewater treatment systems – the most advanced technology currently available – can improve the quality of treated sewage by an order of magnitude.

Keever admits that there is a lack of evidence to directly link cruise sewage dumping in the ocean to negative environmental effects. “There are no studies to show a direct one-to-one connection between cruise ship discharges and the destruction of, say, a turtle habitat. But given that cruise lines trade on the pristine beauty of the places they visit, wouldn’t they want to do everything possible to preserve them?”

Another concern is shore power. Most docked ships use their engines to produce electricity. However, some ships are equipped to use “shore power”, drawing electricity from land-based power plants. Because shore power doesn’t require ships to burn low-quality fuel to produce electricity, it’s easier on the environment.

Andjel, however, questions FOE’s use of shore power as a metric for air pollution reduction. Citing CLIA’s letter to Keever, she writes: “To use shore power as a metric is highly misleading because shore power facilities with the capacity to supply cruise vessels are unavailable at the vast majority of ports where cruise ships call.”

“It’s a little bit of a chicken or an egg thing,” Keever says, adding that some cruise lines have partnered with ports to help pay for shore power infrastructure. In the long run, she says, these investments often pay for themselves. “Studies show that cruise lines often get reduced rates on shore power, especially when they help pay for the infrastructure,” she says.

It remains to be seen if the cruise ship boycott of FOE will continue, but Keever emphasizes that the group will continue to publish its report card. If so, it will continue to help inform travelers interested in enjoying the sun and sand in the least intrusive way possible, many of whom are unlikely to go through each sustainability report to make their own judgments.

An earlier version of this piece suggested that cruise ships release untreated sewage at sea. It has been amended to reflect that cruise ships treat all their sewage “in accordance with international regulations” prior to discharge.

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