I am not the person to take on a cruise for a nice vacation, but cruise travel is booming and each year more people around the world choose this type of travel, a boom which is partly sparked by Chinese passengers. Cruise vacations saw an increase of 20.5% from 2011 to 2016 and in 2018 more than 27 million passengers booked a cruise. But it´s not all sunshine for everyone. Cruises take advantage of local economies. They don’t work with the places they port, when a ship docks for a few hours, cruise lines give passengers recommendations of what to do with their time before returning to the boat. But cruise lines don’t offer sincere recommendations, instead they recommend vendors on the island who are part of a certain pay-to-play model.

As the cruise industry is growing, so is its environmental impact. Their heavy and growing use of fossil fuels means someone on a seven-day cruise produces the same amount of emissions as they would during 18 days on land. Most ships use diesel fuel or gas, or a combination of both. Diesel fuel pollutes the air as it produces nitrogen oxide emissions, which have been linked to respiratory disease and lung cancer. Their high sulfur content is also harmful to the environment since sulfur, when mixed with water and air, forms sulfuric acid, the main component of acid rain. Acid rain can cause deforestation, destroy aquatic life, and corrode building materials. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has announced that all vessels, including the cruise industry, have to meet a deadline of 2020 to change from heavy sulphur fuel to more expensive low sulphur fuel to reduce toxic emissions. Many cruise ship lines are changing to exhaust cleaning systems (scrubbers) rather than choosing to buy cleaner fuel. For example, Royal Caribbean Cruises planned to install them in up to 60-70% of its vessels by next year. The scrubber system uses seawater to “wash” dirty fuel before sending the washwater back into the ocean. Of course, this method has major implications for the oceans and Singapore, Hong Kong and China and some Caribbean islands have all banned the release of washwater from scrubbers into their waters to protect the marine environment. Global NGOs called for a ban on scrubbers earlier this year. Friends of the Earth US said on this issue: “The cruise industry should be striving for the ceiling and not the floor when it comes to environmental protection, especially since it goes to some of the most pristine places on the planet and relies on those places to remain clean for it business.”

Fuel emissions are not the only pollutants coming from cruise ships. The EPA calculated that on a daily basis a 3,000-person cruise ship generates 21,000 gallons of sewage and 170,000 gallons per day of raw graywater that can contain as much bacteria as sewage. All cruise ship sewage goes through so called “sewage treatment,” where solid and liquid waste is separated and sterilized, then the solid is incinerated and the liquid is sent back into the ocean. This water is supposed to be clean but cruise ships disposal is highly unregulated, and waste can be dumped just few short miles off shore.

Knowing all this, I cannot imagine anyone would choose this way of traveling, but if you still really, really want to take a cruise, you can have a look at the Cruise Ship Report Card made by Friends of the Earth, an environmental advocacy group. The Cruise Ship Report Card lets vacationers decide which cruise to take based on a cruise ship or cruise line’s environmental and human health impacts. In the beginning the Cruise Line International Association (CLIA) cooperated and shared data with Friends of the Earth, but in 2014, after a falling out over the results, CLIA refused to take part and now say the data’s inaccurate. The grades are calculated based on sewage treatment, air pollution reduction, water quality compliance, and transparency. Although all (except (Disney) got an F for transparency it is still worth to have a look at the scores and compare the different cruise companies.

Sources

Main picture: On the Luce

Cruise ships