How Waste Is Dealt With On The World's Largest Cruise Ship

[Music] this cruise ship is basically a floating city and just like in a normal city all its residents produce a lot of trash but there aren't any garbage trucks here to scoop it up and take it away we're at sea obviously and since weights can't and shouldn't just be dumped in the ocean well what do cruise ships do with all of it this is something the industry has been dealing with for years Carnival Cruise Line is coming clean about polluting oceans Princess Cruises was fined 40 million dollars in 2016 for illegal dumping and Carnival got hit with a 20 million dollar fine in 2019 for disposing of plastic waste in the oceans Carnival corporation's issues really brought the need for better technology so that these ships can operate more efficiently cruise lines have been working on systems to purify water and deal with waste inside ships up until now these types of options weren't available all this new tech was built into Royal Caribbean's largest and newest ship symphony of the Seas the company says it's a zero landfill ship which means it uses everything from recycling to water filtration to deal with its own waste and this guy is in charge of making sure no single water bottle is unaccounted for it welcome to waste and recycling center we're down on deck to a secret crew only area of the ship crew members check all the ship's trash cans for recyclables and bring them down here for Alex's team to handle despite being the only waste facility on this massive ship it's surprisingly quiet Alex said the busiest time is in the morning when things are unpackaged for the day this is the waste bins that we have every race team has its own way of handing it there are separate teams to deal with each incoming recyclable glass cardboard plastic and metal this our generator room so we have two incinerators one and two this area is mine 24 hours a day we have been crew members who are working here five in the morning and five in the evening crew members separate glass in the colors green brown and white this is the byproduct after we cross it they can process upwards of 13 thousand pounds of glass for a week-long cruise all the small glass pieces are stored in bins until the ship docks plastic goes through this massive compactor even though the ship's gotten rid of plastic straws it still relies on bottled water because for health and safety reasons no cruise ship is allowed to have water fountains so every week they crush about five hundred and twenty eight gallons of water bottles we are compacting the cardboard over there throughout the day cardboard is stacked up in this machine called a baler once it's full it's all compressed into bundles and used aluminum cans well there's some through this baler the machine squeezes them down into big cubes which are then stored in a fridge just off the waste room this area is actually for the items that can produce smell the garbage and that smell could get pretty bad the waste is stored for up to seven days at a time until the ship docks back in Miami called the plastic aluminum paper and glass go to recycling partner facilities in 2018 Royal Caribbean recycled 43 point seven million pounds of waste and any rebates earned from these recycling programs go back to the Employee Retirement Fund the cruise line is hoping that it's a nice incentive for employees to bring recycling down from their own crew cabins so what about things that can't get recycled for example food every week the ship holds up 600 thousand pounds of provisions but for the food that's not eaten well the company had to figure out how to get rid of all of that to each one of the ships restaurants and 36 kitchens has its own suction drain shafts and waiters keep food scraps in separate buckets then once they've gotten enough they place it all in this special drain all the food waste ends up in one big pipe that runs through the entire ship and that pipe leads to what's known as the hydro processor those pipes over there so these were the food waste it's passing through this is being a process through here this machine has a bunch of tiny layers of mesh to break down the food it's being stored in our tank we have two tanks of comminuted food waste and the final step incineration now let's talk about your toilet waste yep we're gonna go there it's all part of the water treatment system onboard controlled from the engineering room all the wastewater that we are generating on board ship is being collected nothing goes overboard unless we have water is divided into two categories grey water from sinks laundries and drains and black water that includes everything from the galleys and your toilets including your urine this is that be mixed together the purification system purifies the water to a point above the US federal standard which is almost safe to drink processes before has been kept on board all is being discharged overboard when we are not see with our systems in order to meet the different opal and anything that can't be recycled or reused on board goes to what's known as a waste-to-energy facility now we didn't get to see it for ourselves but Royal Caribbean said heat or gas from the waste is collected and converted to energy that's definitely within their best interest to be the most environmentally friendly because it significantly can reduce the waste on board the weight that they have to carry the fuel usage and that reduces our operational expenses as well and after one week at sea the recycling gets cleared out incoming provisions are brought on board and the crew prepares a ship to start the process all over again

Channel: Business Insider

Views: 9,101,301

Rating: 4.8882151 out of 5

Keywords: Business Insider, Business News, cruise, royal caribbean, waste, sustainability, oceans, garbage, black water, gray water

Id: WyT8i6NYLZM

Length: 5min 42sec (342 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 09 2020