Friends of the Earth’s just-released 2013 Cruise Ship Report Card grades 16 cruise lines and 162 ships on their environmental practices, and once again Carnival Cruise Lines gets a failing grade for its treatment of the ocean.

With 22 ships using 30-year-old sewage treatment technology, Carnival has the worst impact on our oceans of any other cruise line. The U.S. EPA has found that sewage treated with this old technology often contains significant amounts of fecal bacteria, heavy metals, and nutrients in excess of federal water quality standards.

Click here to call on Carnival Cruise Lines to shape up and install better sewage treatment systems on its ships.

But Carnival’s problems don’t end there. In June Carnival announced plans to leave the Port of Baltimore and move the Carnival Pride ship back to Florida. This is in response to new, life-saving air quality standards that would require it to use cleaner fuels. By sailing from Florida they can burn more cheap ‘bunker fuel’ that is 2,000 times dirtier than diesel fuel sold at gas stations.

And if that weren’t enough, according to a New York Times report by David Leonhardt: “Over the last five years, the company [Carnival Corp.] has paid total corporate taxes — federal, state, local and foreign — equal to only 1.1 percent of its cumulative $11.3 billion in profits.”

Carnival has no excuses.  It can afford to stop polluting our oceans.

Other cruise lines have stepped up and retrofitted the majority of their fleets with advanced sewage treatment systems and yet Carnival keeps launching ships that rely on antiquated technology to treat its sewage. Together we can send them a message a make a difference for the oceans.

Sincerely,
Marcie Keever,
Oceans and vessels program director,
Friends of the Earth