Cruise ships dump 1 billion gallons of sewage into the ocean every year

Some 20 million people board cruise ships every year. And while they might return to land with fond memories of umbrella drinks and shuffleboard, they leave a lot at sea. About a billion gallons (3.8 billion liters) of sewage (pdf), in fact.

That’s according to Friends of the Earth, a non-governmental environmental group, which used US Environmental Protection Agency data to calculate arrive at that gross figure. The EPA estimates that single 3,000-person cruise ship pumps 150,000 gallons of sewage—about 10 backyard swimming pools’ worth—into the ocean per week. One vessel in an EPA study produced 74,000 gallons of sewage (pdf, p.2-1) in a single day.

Cruise ships dump 1 billion gallons of sewage into the ocean every year

-Quartz 12/9/2014