Friends of the Earth has just released its Cruise Line Report Card for 2012, which can be viewed here: http://www.foe.org/cruise-report-card

Friends of the Earth’s Cruise Line Report Card compares the environmental footprint of 15 major cruise lines and 148 cruise ships, in order to help vacationers decide which cruise to take based on a cruise ship or cruise line’s environmental and human health impacts.

Carnival Cruise Lines began homeporting the Carnival Fantasy (the oldest ship in its fleet) in Charleston beginning in 2010. The Carnival Fantasy earned an overall grade this year of an “F.” The grade is the result of the following:

• In the category of Water Quality Compliance, the ship received an “N/A,” since it does not visit Alaska and that state is the only one actually tracking whether cruise ships pollute their water.
• In the category of Sewage Treatment, the ship received an “F” because it does not have the most advanced sewage and wastewater treatment systems available, and instead dumps minimally treated sewage directly into the water.
• In the category of Air Pollution Reduction, the ship received an “F” because it has not been retrofitted to plug in to shorepower, and instead runs polluting engines when docked in the heart of our downtown area.

Carnival Cruise Lines as a whole earned an overall grade of a “D+.” This is an improvement from the “F” it earned in 2010. Carnival Cruise Lines has 24 ships, and only two of those ships have advanced sewage treatment systems. The line has one ship operating in Alaska, and during the graded year received three citations from Alaskan authorities for violations of the state’s water pollution standards. Most notably, half of the lines’ ships that dock at a port with shoreside power are plug-in capable, so there is no reason the company could not invest in the same retrofit for us in Charleston.

It is also important to distinguish that Carnival Corporation, the world’s largest cruise holder, owns nearly half of the lines in this report, not just Carnival Cruise Lines.