Do Cruise Ships Dump Waste In The Ocean

Royal Caribbean touts the fact Symphony of the Seas the worlds largest cruise ship is actually a zero-landfill ship.

Do cruise ships dump waste in the ocean. FOE also cites data from the Environmental Protection Agency EPA which shows an average cruise ship with 3000 passengers and crew produces about 21000 gallons of sewage a day enough to. Yes cruise ships can dump sewage into the ocean. This is a genuine photograph showing two dark brownish clouds in the waters surrounding a cruise ship but it doesnt document that ships dumping human waste into the ocean.

Waters no MPRSA permit is. But beyond that point its essentially a free-for-all. Law allows cruise ships to dump raw sewage in the ocean once a ship is more than three miles off US.

The practice of cruise ships dumping untreated sewage into the ocean and the lax laws that enable this practice. Cruise ship discharges of solid waste are governed by two federal laws. Cruise ships like Symphony have a designated waste and recycling center.

Yes you read that correctly Most cruise ships are equipped with a modern wastewater management system onboard complete with engineers who monitor the treatment of waste that goes down the drains and toilets on the ship. Not only that but also more than two-hundred-thousand. Cruise ships the size of small cities ply the waters off our coasts producing and then dumping large amounts of sewage and other wastes into our oceans polluting our beaches contaminating our coral reefs and destroying our valuable marine ecology.

However many companies will set their own regulations that their ships have to comply with. Federal law requires that cruise ships only dump treated wastewater if they are within three nautical miles of shore. This means the ship can deal with their own waste ranging all the way from recycling to water filtration.

This is because they are constantly on the move making waste management and disposal an added challenge to their day to day operations. A Royal Caribbean cruise ship sails up the Hudson River in New York City Gary HershornGetty Images. While the oceans are large these cruise ships stick to a standard path whether in the Caribbean or the Baltic disposing of their considerable waste at roughly the same stretch at the same time year in and year out.