All You Need to Know About Greywater Discharge From Ships - Ocean Conservation News
"Spoiler alert: it is some really gross stuff"
What's greywater?
"The International Maritime Organization defines it as “the drainage from dishwater, shower, laundry, bath and washbasin drains.” At first glance, this may not seem as bad as drainage from toilets (i.e. sewage), but surprise, it is! While people understand the dangers (and let’s face it, the general grossness) of untreated sewage, few realize that untreated greywater can be just as nasty."
Sarah Bobbe of Ocean Conservancy explains what greywater is, compares greywater to sewages, and how passenger ships (like cruise lines) are the biggest contributer to greywater being dumped into marine ecosystems.
- "The EPA found sewage discharge rates on passenger vessels to be 8.4 gallons per day per person, while greywater discharges total anywhere from 45 gallons per day per person to 65 gallons per day per person."
Dumping raw greywater may be a neccessity still for the majority of sailors but cruise lines have the ability and funding to ehance their greywater waste systems, and should.
Read the article from Ocean Conservancy :
https://oceanconservancy.org/blog/2019/05/27/need-know-graywater-discharge-ships/
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I have lived in a number of countries where all wastewater other than sewage simply ran down the communal drains into a nearby river. It is pretty nasty.
I hope the boats use some sort of filtration to limit at least some of this. To be honest, the sewage might actually be better for the ocean than the detergents and what not because as nasty as it sounds, fish will eat that. well, not paper but i think you know what i mean.
Good stats, I have never been on a cruise so I never bothered to look up any of this information. Pretty frightening stuff.
The only place I know of that as regulations where cruise ships must process their waste water before dumping its is Alaska, but the ships still sometimes illegally dump and there is not enough enforcement. There are various wastewater regulations all over, like in the United States many ports will not allow een small vessels to dump near the coast, they must go out a few miles first before dumping directly into the water. There of course are many marinas that have sewage and greywater dumping access, much like an RV.
I think its Italy that just banned large cruise ships from entering certain historical waters. I will have to double check and post about it.
Hi @portsundries,
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Unfortunately, focussing on developing the best platform for travelers means that we no longer curate the #travelfeed tag and the TravelFeed Hive community. But, you can log in with your Hive account on TravelFeed.io to publish your next travel post, and it will be posted to Hive automatically! Every day, we select the best posts and reward them with an upvote and added visibility.
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Good to know. I will try to remember to post my travel posts from TravelFeed.io and my others here. I like to use multiple routes.