Carnival Corporation Releases Sustainability Report
Carnival Corporation released its ninth annual sustainability report on June 18, detailing the key initiatives and progress made in 2018 toward its 2020 sustainability performance goals.
The company achieved its 25 percent carbon reduction goal three years ahead of schedule in 2017 and made additional progress on that goal in 2018. As part of its ongoing strategy to reduce carbon emissions, Carnival Corporation introduced the world's first cruise ship, AIDAnova, able to be powered in port and at sea by LNG in December 2018. Carnival Corporation has an additional 10 vessels due for delivery between 2019 and 2025 for Costa Cruises, AIDA Cruises, P&O Cruises (UK), Carnival Cruise Line and Princess Cruises.
In 2018, Carnival Corporation also launched Operation Oceans Alive, a company-wide program designed to promote a culture of transparency, learning and commitment across its global operations. Operation Oceans Alive was introduced as an internal effort and call to action to further ensure that all employees receive proper environmental training and oversight. Over the last three years, Carnival Corporation has implemented new and more effective procedures, crew members have taken hundreds of thousands of hours of training and the corporation has spent nearly $1 billion on environmental initiatives.
Carnival Corporation first shared its 2020 sustainability goals in 2015, and it has achieved the following environmental advancements by the end of 2018:
Carbon Footprint: Achieved 27.6 percent reduction in CO2e intensity relative to 2005 baseline.
Advanced Air Quality Systems: 74 percent of its fleet is equipped with Advanced Air Quality Systems, capable of removing virtually all of the sulfur from ships' engine exhaust. This has been the result of an estimated $500 million investment to date. Carnival plans to deploy the systems on more than 85 ships across its global fleet by 2020.
Cold Ironing: 46 percent of its fleet is equipped with capability to use shoreside electric power while the ship is docked.
Advanced Waste Water Purification Systems: Increased coverage of fleet-wide capacity by 8.6 percentage points from 2014 baseline.
Waste Reduction: Reduced non-recycled waste generated by shipboard operations by 3.8 percent relative to 2016 baseline. In 2018, the company started an initiative to evaluate its collective use of non-essential single-use plastic items and alternative options available in the market, with the goal of significantly reducing single-use plastics across the global fleet.
Water Efficiency: Improved water use efficiency of shipboard operations by 4.8 percent relative to 2010 baseline to a rate of 59.6 gallons per person per day, versus the U.S. national average of 90 gallons per person per day.
Investing in the Future
In May 2018 at the Port of Barcelona in Spain, Carnival Corporation opened the Helix Cruise Center, a terminal capable of accommodating its next-generation LNG ships. The Helix terminal, plus the company's existing terminal at the port, represent Carnival Corporation's largest combined terminal investment in Europe at over 46 million euros.
Also in May 2018 in Miami, Carnival Corporation opened its third state-of-the-art Fleet Operations Center (FOC). The FOCs feature a tracking and data analysis platform and integrated proprietary software application called Neptune that enables real-time information sharing between ships and specialized shoreside teams to support fleet operations.
In 2018, Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) committed to a 40 percent reduction in the rate of carbon emissions across the cruise industry's global fleet by 2030. As a CLIA member, Carnival Corporation is committed to doing its part to help achieve this goal, as it shares the International Maritime Organization's vision of a carbon-free shipping industry by the end of this century.
Caring About Communities
Carnival Corporation has worked to support the communities in the more than 700 ports visited by its global fleet. After a series of devastating storms in the Caribbean in 2017, Carnival Corporation committed to support a series of community projects in 2018 supporting children, education and emergency preparedness in the Caribbean through its $10 million pledge in funding and in-kind support from its philanthropic arm, Carnival Foundation, along with its brands, the Miami HEAT Charitable Fund, and the Micky and Madeleine Arison Family Foundation. Carnival Corporation and several of its brands have been working with local and international non-governmental organizations, including UNICEF and United Way, to partner with several islands on community projects specifically tailored to their needs and designed to have a lasting impact.
Carnival Foundation and the Micky and Madeleine Arison Family Foundation also committed to aiding communities affected by Hurricane Florence in North and South Carolina, Super Typhoon Mangkhut in the Philippines and Indonesia's earthquake and resulting tsunami in 2018, pledging up to $5 million to support the relief efforts and the long-term recovery strategy.
Carnival Corporation's Costa Cruises brand partners with The Food Bank Network and others on the 4GOODFOOD program, which aims to halve food waste on board the Italian company's ships by 2020. Through this unique and growing project, Costa Cruises considers every aspect from food preparation and consumption on board to the donation of surplus food. The expanding project has now been replicated in nine ports in the Mediterranean, and since its inception, has given a second life to more than 70,000 food servings, donated to food banks in each local port.
In Australia and the Pacific, Carnival Australia, a part of Carnival Corporation, supports indigenous entrepreneurs in the Pacific through YuMi projects, which translates to "you and me." Working with the Australian government, Carnival Australia is identifying, developing and accelerating the development of emerging indigenous tourism operators in Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea.
Carnival's sustainability report is available here.