Food waste on CCL?

[Fietsen1]

Hello all!

 

  My wife and I have taken several cruises and we always attend the Q/A with the officers. Inevitably, someone will ask what happens to all the food waste that amasses on board. Every single time the response was the same: They grind it down and feed it to the fish at sea. 

  We were recently on a Celebrity Cruise where someone asked the above question. The officer's response was that they grind it down, dehydrate it and then burn it. They claimed it was better for the environment. I understand not wanting to give human food to marine life, but then to pollute the air with smoke? Those emissions also eventually make their way back into to water. 

  While not wanting to get into a debate, I was curious to know what the "industry standard" is now for food waste. Maybe it differs from line to line? Ship to ship? 

 

Cheers,

[chengkp75]

There really isn't any "human food" left after the food waste is ground and slurried in the "pulper" (garbage disposal) system.  It approximates a loose oatmeal consistency.

 

As for incinerating the food waste, these are incinerators that are designed to burn all sorts of trash (and the ships will burn paper products, and sometimes sewage sludge), at high temperatures to ensure complete combustion, with tightly controlled combustion ratios and secondary burners to ensure that there are little emissions, and no "smoke".  They are designed to ensure that whatever cannot burn into CO2 and water vapor is left in the incinerator as ash, which is landed for dumping in landfills.  These are small versions of the municipal incinerators used widely around the world, to either merely eliminate waste or to generate electricity from garbage.

 

As for industry standard, by IMO regulations, either discharging slurried food waste to sea, or incinerating it in a certified incinerator is allowed.  I think most ships pump the food waste to sea, as the handling and drying of food waste and feeding it to an incinerator is costly, potentially smelly around the ship, and no less legal or environmentally harmful.

[Fietsen1]

@chengkp75   Thank you, sir! You did a fantastic job explaining and educating me. Thank you for your response and your service (my father is a Marine).

[chengkp75]

3 minutes ago, Fietsen1 said:

@chengkp75   Thank you, sir! You did a fantastic job explaining and educating me. Thank you for your response and your service (my father is a Marine).

You're welcome, I see you've posted this on other lines' threads, I'll refrain from answering those, but you might want to indicate that you've received an answer here.

 

I appreciate your father's service, but as he will tell you, there is a vast difference between a Marine and a Merchant Mariner.  While I have supported our troops in two wars, I am a civilian mariner (though I was a Naval Reserve officer for a short while), who has had a career of 46 years at sea, on nearly every type of oceangoing ship (and some river vessels as well), including cruise ships, as an engineering officer.

[pe4all]

Either way they do it - it beats the giant black garbage bags we watched them throw over the stern on our first cruises. (1980's)  Was literally a line of them in the wake of the ship.  

[chengkp75]

3 minutes ago, pe4all said:

Either way they do it - it beats the giant black garbage bags we watched them throw over the stern on our first cruises. (1980's)  Was literally a line of them in the wake of the ship.  

The advent of the cell phone camera and the EPA's tipster reward system put a halt to those practices.

[BlerkOne]

32 minutes ago, pe4all said:

Either way they do it - it beats the giant black garbage bags we watched them throw over the stern on our first cruises. (1980's)  Was literally a line of them in the wake of the ship.  

Save the bales.