The topic I wanted to look at for this posting is the garbage dumping done by cruise ships. If you take a took at the average cruise ship which can carry about 4500 passengers, which averages out to about 600,000 people a year (these stats have been taken from cruises that travel through the Alaskan passage). That equals out to over a million gallons of wastewater been dumped into the Alaskan waters every year by these ships. Over the years many major cruise lines have been fined for various types of pollution infractions. They include falsifying records, installing illegal bypasses on the ships, dumping of oil sewage, garbage, and hazardous toxins. (http://www.eco-pros.com/humanimpact.htm).
Currently it is cheaper for cruise ships to take the risk of dumping their waste into the oceans, because most of the times they wont get caught, then to properly dispose of all their waste on the mainland dumps. By falsifying the amount of waste produced they can get away with dumping excessive amounts into the international waters. The fines right now are not a sufficient deterrent. They are very minimal if they actually get caught. Plus with the major cruise lines getting a great deal of business as the trend grows paying these fines are not a major deal. The risk factor is minimal and the benefits for dumping waste heavily outweigh the negatives from a business sense perspective.
This a video I found on youtube not totally focused on the cruise industry but it shows how the ocean has become a dump.
I also found some shocking facts of how much waste is produced by person.
“This means that the generation of waste per passenger per day comes to at least 300 litres of greywater, 40 of blackwater, 10 of bilge water, 3.5 kilos of garbage and 30 grams of toxic waste. “
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