Cruise Ships Routinely Dump Trash in the Caribbean Sea

Cruise ships are dumping solid waste into the Caribbean Sea, despite a ban, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it right now.

The Caribbean Islands claim that their resistance to the ban is a matter of space, says the International Herald Tribune, but others believe that it is a matter of their $1.5 billion-a-year tourism industry. In 1993, the United Nations banned dumping of solid waste in the Caribbean Sea, ruling that such refuse should be treated on land. Since then, officials have been waiting for the surrounding nations to report their “refuse” capacity…and waiting…and waiting. The ban cannot take effect until a certain number of the nations that own the Caribbean Islands report this capacity. While officials wait for the Islands to report their refuse capacities, cruise ships are routinely dumping ground glass, paper, and other trash into the open Caribbean Sea. Other parts of the sea, however, are prohibited from such dumping. The International Herald Tribune says that the ban:

Has already taken effect in the Antarctic, the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, and the Persian Gulf and is due to come into force in the Mediterranean in May.

These are the areas that the United Nations Maritime Organization has ruled to be vulnerable to the dangers of solid waste dumping. The ban prohibits any refuse, except food scraps, from being tossed at sea. The Caribbean Islands, however, are still following the “pre-ban” regulations, which allow them to dump garbage three miles from shore, as long as it is ground to less than an inch. The type of garbage they can dump includes metal, paper, and glass. This incensed environmentalists say that such dumping can upset the delicate ecosystem of the ocean and disable and kill sea creatures. But the Caribbean Islands are not thinking of the ecology but of their economy, say critics. Tourism from cruise ships is a $1.5 billion-a-year industry for the islands. Moreover, the islands compete with each other for these tourist dollars. This has prevented them from coming to “common ground” over the ocean dumping issues. They are afraid, says the International Herald Tribune, of imposing restrictions on cruise ships that might cause them to go to their competitor islands. Although officials have tried to persuade the Caribbean Island that garbage washing up on shore is also a danger to their tourism business, they are, so far, not listening.