Cruise Ships Throw Garbage Overboard

A general belief is that these enormous boats simply dump raw sewage and other pollutants straight into the oceans.

Cruise ships throw garbage overboard. But it happens. A strong gust on the sea can blow items off balcony tables or even out of your hand. Indeed in 2016 Princess Cruises was fined a record 32 million for the illegal.

Garbage discharge regulations do not apply when the discharge of garbage from a ship was a necessary action for the purpose of securing the safety of a ship and those on board or saving life at sea. Commercial ships and boats generate garbage a lot of it. It is only in the last several decades that even western countries stopped doing it.

The shipping company Aida Cruises Ports of Stockholm and the Cruise Line International Association CLIA show how the wastewater is handled and purified on. And though many US. In such cases an entry should be made in the Garbage Record Book or in the ships official log-book for ships of less than 400 gross tonnage.

The largest cruise ships can have up to 5000 passengers and crew. Of these cruise ships. Just one modern cruise ship creates about eight tons of solid waste every week.

This waste not only carries bacteria and viruses that are harmful to human health but can also sicken and kill marine life including corals. Newly released undercover videos appear to show a cruise ship employee casually tossing bags of garbage straight into the ocean. Vessels generally are permitted to discharge food waste but they may either incinerate nonfood waste on board or unload it at a port.

Much of this garbage takes years to decompose. The videos see below were purportedly filmed aboard the Magnifica a cruise ship owned by the Geneva-based company MSC Cruises. But two-fifths of the 167 cruise ships plying the oceans still use 35-year-old waste treatment technology says Friends of the Earth.