New Princess cruise ship an environmental example for the entire industry to follow

On June 13 in Southampton, England, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, will christen the new Royal Princess, marking the beginning of a week-long inaugural celebration for Princess Cruises. This 4,950-passenger and crew cruise ship spans 330 meters in length (about 3 football fields), weighs over 140,000 gross tons, and is the first new Princess cruise ship to be launched since 2008. The Royal Princess is also the largest ship in the Princess fleet and is the 6^el largest cruise ship in the world.

In addition to all of the new features Princess is talking about, el Royal Princess has also installed an advanced water treatment system to treat its sewage and shore power capability so the ship doesn’t have to run its engines while at a dock where it can plug in. For several years, Princess Cruises has served as a good example among its fellow cruise companies for its consistent efforts to reduce its ships’ air and water pollution footprints. Of the other 16 Princess ships in its fleet, 11 are equipped with advanced water treatment systems, 9 have plug-in or cold ironing capability and the 7 ships that traveled to Alaska in 2010 performed well earning Princess a B+ overall on the 2012 Friends of the Earth Cruise Ship Report Card. With the Royal Princess launch today and another new ship, the Princesa regia, launching in June 2014, not only are we pleased to see Princess Cruises commitment to install the latest and most advanced pollution control technology on its ships, we also hope that other lower ranked cruise lines on our Report Card follow suit and take responsibility for the environmental pollution they generate and work to reduce it in the future.