The cruise line giant Carnival Corporation and its Princess subsidiary have agreed to pay a criminal penalty of $20 million for environmental violations such as dumping plastic waste into the ocean. Princess Cruise Lines has already paid $40 million over other deliberate acts of pollution...Million-dollar fines are just a cost of doing business for major corporations. More details at NPR.
Miami-based Carnival pleaded guilty Monday to six probation violations, including the dumping of plastic mixed with food waste in Bahamian waters. The company also admitted sending teams to visit ships before the inspections to fix any environmental compliance violations, falsifying training records...
Carnival has had a long history of dumping plastic trash and oily discharge from its ships, with violations dating back to 1993... In 2013, a whistleblowing engineer exposed the illegal dumping of contaminated waste and oil from the company's Caribbean Princess ship. He told authorities that engineers were using a special device called the "magic pipe" to bypass the ship's water treatment system and dump oil waste straight into the ocean...
At the time, Princess told NPR that it chalked up the violations to "the inexcusable actions of our employees."
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Labeled "Liverpool Champions League parade" via.
I think I recall hearing that the "success" of the Marti Gras festivals were based on the volume/weight of trash picked up at the end of the event.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure why cruise companies are not held more accountable. I understand it's hard for the small island nations they visit to impose rules. However, larger players like the US and EU could simply set up stringent requirements for cruise ships visiting their shores.Cruising companies can not ignore those nations, and once precedent has been set, the smaller parties can follow.
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