Environment
Of all the items we think about being in a landfill…pillows? That means it’s one more item for cruise lines to consider in their ongoing attempts to being environmentally responsible. So, about the pillows. A cruise line with 25,000 beds uses 50,000…and that’s when the customers don’t ask (blush) for an extra pillow. Obviously, pillows [...]
News item: Princess Cruises to prohibit smoking in staterooms and on balconies. You know what this really means, don’t you? Democracy’s at work. The decision by Princess — likely to become the industry standard — is the result of consumer studies. It will take effect early next year. “Smokers are a small minority of our [...]
Today is the official start of Hurricane Season and the worst thing about that is for many parts of the continent it’s still Tornado Season. Mother Nature can sometimes be restless, can’t she? Every year at this time, people who like to go on cruises wonder if they should. Every year, people who write about [...]
This is an excerpt of a reader’s comment about cruising, a comment we stumbled across on the Internet: “Cruisers are not aware of the acute environmental damage that they are doing to water and air sheds. Cruise ships are small mobile cities that dump their sewage into oceans and spew toxic emissions into the air.” [...]
Here’s an oxymoron for you — today we’re celebrating Earth Day in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. There are only two places where actual “earth” can be seen on the Celebrity Eclipse, as it zeroes in on the Azores, the first terra firma anybody on this ship will have seen in six days. One [...]
When you feel like you’re a dinosaur, one of the phenomenons you don’t always appreciate is the significance of something like Earth Hour. Many of us didn’t grow up hearing about climate concerns and global warming and other environmental issues, so when they became popular rallying cries, we didn’t always…well, understand. You only have to [...]
Okay, so what came first…the chicken or the cage? In a changing trend on cruise ships, eggs from chickens are good. Eggs from cages are not — that is, from chickens in cages. It’s all part of what has become a phrase that’s becoming familiar: cage-free eggs. The two biggest cruise companies in the world, [...]
We call this confusion. On the weekend, the Seattle Times reported that the environmental group Friends of the Earth, in its second annual report card on the cruise industry, downgraded Princess for “its numerous recent violations of Alaska’s strong water pollution laws.” Fair enough? Yesterday, the Port of San Francisco 2009 Cruise Ship Environmental Award’s [...]
We have dear friends from The Netherlands, so we know how meaningful ”orange” is to the Dutch, starting with the “House of…” more than four centuries ago. Today there’s a little green added to the orange that is synonymous with all things Dutch. The news wire, or Internet portals, have been buzzing the past few [...]
ON BOARD THE CELEBRITY MILLENNIUM, sailing from Puntarenas, Costa Rica — In these days of political correctness, especially of the eco kind, sometimes the skeptics among us wonder if people professing to being good custodians of the planet are just saying that because it’s the thing to say. Are they practising what they preach? Do [...]