Reuters
- Carnival Corporation has paid millions of dollars in fines over the years for violating environmental regulations.
- Carnival is the parent company of major cruise lines like Carnival Cruise Line, Princess Cruises, P&O Cruises, and Holland America.
- Those cruise lines have all come under scrutiny over pollution since the 1990s.
- "We fully recognize past mistakes and transgressions and have dedicated our leadership, our focus and our resources to continuously improve every day, every week and every year as a critical component of our company's mission and long-term goals," a Carnival spokesperson told Business Insider.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
The cruise industry doesn't have the best track record when it comes to minimizing its impact on the environment.
In a 2019 report card for the cruise industry's environmental practices, the environmental-advocacy group Friends of the Earth gave all but one of the 16 cruise lines it evaluated a grade of C- or lower. Every brand owned by Carnival Corp., the world's biggest cruise company, received an "F" after the company was fined $20 million for violating a probation agreement with the US government.
Ross Klein, a professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland who studies the cruise industry, runs a website that lists the fines cruise lines have received related to their environmental practices. While Carnival brands appear on that list more often than cruise lines run by other companies, it's difficult to tell if Carnival brands commit more environmental violations than their competitors, Klein told Business Insider.
Many of the listed violations took place in Alaska, which has a robust system to monitor the discharges cruise ships make, Klein said in an email, and Carnival brands account for a significant portion of the Alaskan cruise market.
"That aside, as Carnival is presently under probation and the compliance reports are dismal, it is difficult to imagine that the other companies don't behave much the same," Klein said. "It is just that they are not being monitored."
A Carnival spokesperson told Business Insider it has acknowledged its missteps and is working to correct them.
"We fully recognize past mistakes and transgressions and have dedicated our leadership, our focus and our resources to continuously improve every day, every week and every year as a critical component of our company's mission and long-term goals," the Carnival spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said that the company has recently created the position of the chief compliance and ethics officer. Peter Anderson currently serves in that capacity, across all Carnival brands. Anderson is also working with the company's court appointed monitor "to provide additional oversight."
"Previously these functions were organized as part of several different organizations within the company, including health, environment, safety, security and legal groups, now all connected directly to Peter," the spokesperson said. "As part of his role, Peter is working closely with all our brands, not only key compliance and performance initiatives, but also on broader efforts around company culture tied to our crew members, ship officers and the entire workforce."
Carnival's spokesperson also said that the brand is making progress on a number of environmentally friendly initiatives, such as "dramatically reducing single-use plastics on board," "reducing food waste," working with "recognized environmentalists such as Jean-Michel Cousteau," and utilizing "electrical shore power systems" and other technology to "lower our overall carbon footprint around the world." So far, the representative said Carnival has lowered its carbon footprint rate by 25%, and is striving to lower the rate to 40% by 2030.
"For our company and each of our brands, our top priorities are safety, environmental compliance and protecting the environment," the spokesperson said.
Here are 10 times one of the company's cruise lines has run into trouble with regulators over environmental issues.
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