What Do They Do With Human Waste On Cruise Ships

If youre one of the 20 million people a year that sit on cruise ship toilet seats chances are you spent at least a fleeting moment wondering exactly what happens when you flush the loo.

What do they do with human waste on cruise ships. If released near coasts untreated sewage can contaminate seafood kill marine animals and sicken swimmers. Cruise ships generate a lot of waste due to the thousands of people on board the vessels every day. FOE also cites data from the Environmental Protection Agency EPA which shows an average cruise ship with 3000 passengers and crew produces about 21000 gallons of sewage a day enough to fill 10.

However many companies will set their own regulations that their ships have to comply with. And according to Oceana cruise ships dont need to have permits to dump and dont need to report the amount of sewage they dump. Under the current Caribbean regulations ships can begin dumping garbage including metal glass and paper three miles five kilometres from shore as long.

In the waste-recycling plant a 50-cubic-foot glass crusher gnashes. But beyond that point its essentially a free-for-all. These days any cruise ship is like a huge city where every detail is thought out so that passengers feel just as comfortable as on land only better.

Some cruise lines press the food waste in a giant trash compactor dry it and then burn it to produce hot water for your shower. What the cruise liners claim to do is dump all the waste and excess food into a massive hot boiler that churns everything into a paste and that is disposed of in a hygienic and professional manner into the ocean. Just like in a small city cruise ships have on-site waste recycling plants packed with trash-eating appliances.

With thousands of people onboard a ship there is a need for a sophisticated approach to managing where everything goes once people are done with it from human waste to recycling to leftover food. Reportedly they dump around thirty-thousand gallons of human waste. What do cruise ships do with human waste.

Waste water is the second biggest part of onboard waste. Cruise ship passengers might think theyre leaving it all behind but that couldnt be further from the truth. The ship has a few tanks that are refered to as contaminated holding tanks they work a lot like a septic tank in rural areas the waste is treated with chemicals to break it down then it is pumped over the side way out at sea or if they can in port they will hook up sewage lines and pump it into the local sewage system in whatever port they are in.