A typical cruise ship’s daily waste output includes, says Ocean Conservancy’s study, 37,000 gallons of oily bilge water; 30,000 gallons of sewage; 255,000 gallons of waste water (showers, laundry, dishwashing etc); 15 gallons of toxic waste from photo processing, painting and dry cleaning; seven tons of rubbish; and smokestack and exhaust emissions equivalent to 12,000 cars.
Caribbean reefs are affected, some believe, not only by oil spills, bilgewater, and other dangerous waste, but also by supposedly “harmless” grey water — the by-product of thousands of baths, showers, and other cleaning activities. The Ocean Conservancy study found that the amount of waste generated by each cruise passenger was far greater than that created by
a vacation on land. The per capita pollution generated by these floating cities was actually worse than a city of the same size due to weak pollution laws, lax enforcement, and the difficulty of detecting illegal discharges at sea — the US Coast Guard devotes less than 1% of its total aircraft surveillance to environmental protection. The cruise ship industry’s
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