To: Carnival CEO Gerry Cahill
Tell Carnival Cruise Lines to stop polluting our oceans
I have just learned that Carnival received an F for sewage treatment from the 2013 Cruise Ship Report Card issued by Friends of the Earth. I am extremely upset that your company has been using 30-year-old technology to treat sewage waste on a significant majority of your cruise ship fleet. Sewage treated with this older technology often contains significant amounts of fecal bacteria, heavy metals, and nutrients that I don’t want dumped in our oceans.
Please commit to cleaning up Carnival Cruise Lines' ships before even more sewage pollutes our oceans, contaminating our beaches and reefs and potentially causing illness in people through eating tainted seafood or contact with polluted water.
Please commit to cleaning up Carnival Cruise Lines' ships before even more sewage pollutes our oceans, contaminating our beaches and reefs and potentially causing illness in people through eating tainted seafood or contact with polluted water.
Why is this important?
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.
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.
Tell Carnival Cruise Lines to clean up its sewage problem – install advanced sewage treatment systems on all of its ships!
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.
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.
Tell Carnival Cruise Lines to clean up its sewage problem – install advanced sewage treatment systems on all of its ships!