Promises from cruise industry on environmental footprint ring hollow

VANCOUVER, B.C. (Unceded Coast Salish Territories) — With cruise season in the Salish Sea on the horizon, an update on the Green Cruise Corridor came today via a webinar hosted by the Port of Seattle.

Today, the Green Cruise Corridor Pacific Northwest to Alaska group hosted a webinar to offer an update on their progress towards establishing the world’s first Green Cruise Corridor. While no timeframe for implementation or results of a promised feasibility study were able to be announced, spokespeople from cruise lines, ports, and municipalities spoke and confirmed commitments to decarbonize operations while Carnival Corporation celebrated the use of LNG.

“Travelling by cruise ship has an outsized environmental footprint, and seeing cruise lines and ports recognise the need for change can feel exciting, except that methane gas and ocean dumping are not climate solutions,” said Anna Barford, Canada Shipping Campaigner at Stand.earth. “The inclusion of LNG [liquefied natural gas] undermines the credibility of this group. They are supporting the growth of methane gas and fracking — a destructive extraction process on land — at a time when the world needs to move quickly away from both these practices. Dumping and other pollution streams were completely unaddressed in this webinar.”

Over the last decade, the cruise ship industry on the West Coast has exploded. In 2019, the B.C. coast alone was subjected to 32 billion litres of dumping of sewage, greywater, and acidic fossil fuel waste from scrubbers. These waste streams contain a variety of pollutants, including fecal coliform, heavy metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are extremely harmful to aquatic organisms and coastal ecosystems. Contaminants not only impact the health of the marine ecosystem, toxins can bioaccumulate to the food on our plates.

“The Green Cruise Corridor ‘first movers’ would be more appropriately named ‘first stallers,’” added Karla Hart, Global Cruise Activist Network Facilitator. “They have the opportunity now to change from the dirtiest of marine fuels — heavy fuel oil (HFO) — to refined marine gas oil (MGO). Supplies exist. Cruise ships already burn MGO off the coast of California. Switching to MGO would prevent toxic scrubber waste dumping and only increase the average passenger cost by about $100 for a seven-day Alaska cruise, or the cost of one cocktail a day per passenger. Questions on ending the use of HFO and scrubbers as an immediate transition step that reduces emissions and prepares cruise lines/passengers for higher costs of green fuel went unaddressed.”

Over the summer, an Access to Information and Privacy Request obtained by National Observer revealed that Transport Canada planned to crack down on scrubbers in 2022, but instead let the cruise ship industry talk them out of it. Municipalities have since joined the chorus of voices calling for a ban on scrubbers, with a unanimous motion at the September 2022 Union of BC Municipalities convention. Meanwhile, the cruise industry continues to present itself as an important economic driver behind Victoria’s tourism industry despite analysis revealing that economic benefits of non-cruise tourism dwarf those from cruise tourism.

Stand.earth is calling on Canada’s federal government to support coastal communities by banning and preventing pollution from ships, including cruise ships.

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Media contact:

Anna Barford, Canada Shipping Campaigner, Stand.earth, 604-757-7029, anna@stand.earth
Karla Hart, Global Cruise Activist Network Facilitator, 907-957-6723, karlajhart@gmail.com