EU plans cruise liner clean-up

They may no longer be the preserve of the rich and famous but the boom in luxury cruise ship holidays among a new generation of sea travellers is still costing the earth.

The great ocean-going leviathans, catering for up to 5,000 passengers and crew with their luxury restaurants, shopping arcades, theatres, cinemas and casinos, present themselves as the ultimate in travel recreation.

However, conservationists claim they are giant mobile sewage farms pumping millions of gallons of untreated and chemical-saturated waste into the world's oceans.

Now the industry, which carries more than 10 million passengers through some of the world's beautiful and sensitive eco-systems every year, is facing tighter pollution controls. The European Union is considering imposing emissions controls on cruise liners.

"We're doing all sort of things to regulate the survival of major fish species around the world, yet seem content to allow cruise liners to dump raw sewage and other chemicals into the sea," said Struan Stevenson, the chairman of the European Parliament's fisheries committee who is leading a campaign in the parliament to force cruise companies to clean up their act.

Ocean Conservancy, a US based environmental pressure group, has calculated that on average one ship can generate daily up to 37,000 gallons of oily bilge water; 30,000 gallons of sewage; 255,000 gallons of non-sewage waste-water from laundries, baths and galleys; and 15 gallons of toxic chemicals from photo processing and dry-cleaning.

By 2006 it is estimated that at least 26,000 tourists will visit Antarctica annually, congregating at only a handful of sites where the plants, seals and penguins cling to the 2 per cent of the land that is ice-free during the chilly summer. Some penguin colonies already get up to three visits in every 24-hour period.

However, the International Council of Cruise Lines (ICCL) claims there is evidence that cruise ships have little impact on the environment due to the fact that any waste water discharged is quickly diluted in the sea to such an extent that it is no threat to marine life. "Study results have shown that waste water has essentially no impact on marine animal species," a spokesman said.

This view is shared by the Passenger Shipping Association, which represents the UK cruise industry.

A spokesman said: "In terms of pollution our industry is pretty heavily controlled already and most cruise liners are ahead of any possible legislation."