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Joined: Nov 2006
Posts: 101
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Thought y'all would enjoy these action shots of the Norwegian Dream dumping on Belize:

http://blog.stonegrooves.net/06-12/cruise-ship-dumping-trash-on-belize-barge.html

Joined: Feb 2004
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Nice piece Tranquilo. Thanks.


www.conchcreative.com
Belize Wedding Photography

Joined: Mar 2006
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Too many Cruise ships are wrong for Belize on so many levels.

Joined: Nov 2006
Posts: 101
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This just in: it is legal. Maybe. There's a Belizean named Trevor Miles who has the contract. "Legal" isn't always a concrete thing in Belize though. I wonder how cheap a deal the cruise ships get for dumping here than they'd have to pay in, say, Houston.

Last edited by Tranquilo Traveler; 12/07/06 11:34 AM.
Joined: Oct 1999
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nasty nasty man, thanks a lot for posting....

The opening to the left of this photo, near the stern of the ship, is the anus out of which the giant Belize-bound turds were passed.

Joined: May 2006
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Tranquilo

I sent a friend to your cruise ship garbage blog and he quite enjoyed it and sent this article back to me to share...

Throwaway Economy In Trouble

November 30, 2006 - By Earth Policy Institute

WASHINGTON, D.C. - "One of the distinctly unhealthy economic trends over the last half-century has been the emergence of a throwaway economy," writes Lester Brown, President of Earth Policy Institute, in his book Plan B 2.0. First conceived following World War II as a way of providing consumers with products, it soon came to be seen also as a vehicle for creating jobs and sustaining economic growth. The more goods produced and discarded, the reasoning went, the more jobs there would be.

What sold throwaways was their convenience. For example, rather than washing cloth towels or napkins, consumers welcomed disposable paper versions. Thus we have substituted facial tissues for handkerchiefs, disposable paper towels for hand towels, disposable table napkins for cloth ones, and throwaway beverage containers for refillable ones. Even the shopping bags we use to carry home throwaway products become part of the garbage flow.

The throwaway economy is on a collision course with the earth's geological limits. Aside from running out of landfills near cities, the world is also fast running out of the cheap oil that is used to manufacture and transport throwaway products. Perhaps more fundamentally, there is not enough readily accessible lead, tin, copper, iron ore, or bauxite to sustain the throwaway economy beyond another two or three generations. Assuming an annual 2-percent growth in extraction, U.S. Geological Survey data on current economically recoverable reserves show the world has 18 years of reserves remaining for lead, 20 years for tin, 25 years for copper, 64 years for iron ore, and 69 years for bauxite.

The cost of hauling garbage from cities is rising as nearby landfills fill up and the price of oil climbs. One of the first major cities to exhaust its locally available landfills was New York. When the Fresh Kills landfill, the local destination for New York's garbage, was permanently closed in March 2001, the city found itself hauling garbage to landfill sites in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and even Virginia - with some of the sites being 300 miles away.

Given the 12,000 tons of garbage produced each day in New York and assuming a load of 20 tons of garbage for each of the tractor-trailers used for the long-distance hauling, some 600 rigs are needed to move garbage from New York City daily. These tractor-trailers form a convoy nearly nine miles long-impeding traffic, polluting the air, and raising carbon emissions. This daily convoy led Deputy Mayor Joseph J. Lhota, who supervised the Fresh Kills shutdown, to observe that getting rid of the city's trash is now "like a military-style operation on a daily basis."

Fiscally strapped local communities in other states are willing to take New York's garbage - if they are paid enough. Some see it as an economic bonanza. State governments, however, are saddled with increased road maintenance costs, traffic congestion, increased air pollution, noise, potential water pollution from landfill leakage, and complaints from nearby communities.

Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore wrote to Mayor Rudy Giuliani in 2001 complaining about the use of Virginia as a dumping ground. "I understand the problem New York faces," he noted, "but the home state of Washington, Jefferson and Madison has no intention of becoming New York's dumping ground."

The challenge is to replace the throwaway economy with a reduce-reuse-recycle economy. For cities like New York, the challenge should be less what to do with the garbage and more of how to avoid producing it in the first place.

An excerpt of "Plan B 2.0" by Lester Brown is available at www.earthpolicy.org/Books/PB2/index.htm

Contact Info:

Media Contact:
Reah Janise Kauffman
Tel: 202-496-9290 x 12
E-mail: [email protected]

Research Contact:
Janet Larsen
Tel: 202-4960-9290 x 14
E-mail: [email protected]

Website : Earth Policy Institute



San Pedro based Belize Blog since 2007 - great travel resources & discounts https://tacogirl.com/

Joined: Oct 1999
Posts: 84,397
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here's a story not that old along these lines. it really got to me

//ambergriscaye.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Board=6&Number=199327&Searchpage=3&Main=21048&Words=trash&topic=0&Search=true#Post199327

Joined: Nov 2006
Posts: 101
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My cruise ship post was picked up by gadling.com (a great travel blog): http://www.gadling.com/2006/12/13/cruise-ship-dumping/

which led me to this link for a Hawaiian environmental organization against cruise ships: http://www.kahea.org/cruiseships/

The site has some very interesting info on the cruise ship industry, including this press page collection of articles about cruise ships breaking the law: http://www.kahea.org/cruiseships/news.php

From the site:

Quote
"Each cruise ship carries an average of 3,000 people and produces as much sewage and waste as a mid-sized city. Tons of raw sewage, garbage and even hazardous waste are produced and disposed of each day by a single ship. This constant discharge of waste into our oceans is multiplied by dozens of ships operating every day in our precious oceans.

Cruise ships do not have to comply with environmental and water quality protection laws that are required for municipalities. They are allowed to dump sewage and garbage directly into our oceans-and they do!"

Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 232
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I have no idea where it came from, but I had a computer monitor wash up on my beach last week - complete with barnacles! How does something like make it across the reef?

Joined: Nov 2006
Posts: 101
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