Holland America

While the 1,432 passengers aboard Holland America's Zaandam, are enjoying a five-course meal at one of the ship's plush dining venues or unwinding with a hot-stone massage in the vessels'  full-service spa, crew are bustling below, sorting out tons of waste and recyclables.

The Zaandam is one of 11 ships operated by six major cruise lines making weekly departures for Alaska from Seattle's Elliot Bay this summer.

Environmental organizations have long charged cruise lines with producing extreme quantities of waste. According to Bluewater Network, which merged with San-Francisco-based Friends of the Earth (FOE) in 2005, even a week-long  trip generates serious garbage:

"A typical cruise ship on a one-week voyage generates more than 50 tons of garbage, two million gallons of graywater (waste water from sinks, showers, galleys and laundry facilities), 210,000 gallons of sewage, and 35,000 gallons of oil-contaminated water."

But cruise industry representatives maintain crew aboard their vessels are making cutting-edge efforts to be more sustainable.

Everything Zaandam passengers throw away, said Joe Parks, one of Holland America's environmental officers, is sorted by crew members and stored on the ship until the vessel can offload it at a port.

The sorting room (pictured above) is two floors below the first passenger deck. The room has a full-time staff of 6-8 members who separate glass, paper and cardboard, aluminum cans and trash. The recyclable materials are compressed: boxes are broken down and machines hum and clamor, pressing  bucketloads of glass and cans.

Grades are in and several cruise ship lines that homeport in Seattle—including Celebrity Cruises, Royal Caribbean Int’l and Carnival Cruise Lines — didn’t even make Cs in sustainability, according to an environmental group rating the cruise ship companies.

Friends of the Earth, a national San Francisco-based environmental organization, released its Cruise Ship Environmental Report Card suggesting several cruise lines have a sub-par commitment to ocean water and air quality.

Cruise Line International Association (CLIA) maintains the report card — which graded 13 companies on their sewage treatment systems, their efforts to reduce air pollution, their compliance with state water laws and accessibility of their environmental information — casts an unfair light on the industry.

“For the second year in a row, we’ve found that cruise lines are doing less than they can to limit the environmental impacts of their ships,”  FOE's Clean Vessels Campaign director Marcie Keever, said Wednesday in a press release. “From ending the use of dirty fuel that pollutes the air to stopping the disgusting practice of dumping sewage and other waste into the sea, it’s time for the cruise industry to clean up its act.”

In a statement Tuesday, Florida-based CLIA defended its member companies:

Before the end of the month, a 780-foot visitor will arrive at Pier 66. And Holland America’s ms  Amsterdam is just the first of many—more than 200 other cruise vessels will dock in Seattle this spring and summer.

Cruise ship season — which brings a sharply growing number of giant vessels like the ms Amsterdam to Puget Sound each year — is just around the corner.

“We’ve been talking about cruise ships for the past 10 years, really because of the significant expansion in our waters” said Marcie Keever, a representative from national environmental organization Friends of the Earth (FOE). “We have seen an explosion of cruise ships. They really are small cities.”

The number of cruise ships docking in Seattle each year has increased from 6 vessels carrying 6,615 passengers in 1999 to 218 vessels with 875,433 passengers in 2009. The Port of Seattle estimates the city will see five more ships this year, carrying a total of 858,00 passengers. The ships will dock at either Pier 66 or Pier 91, which opened to cruise ships last year.

And as the number of vacationers relaxing on cruise ships climbs each year, so does the volume of air and water pollution that cruise lines produce, Keever said.

Federal law prohibits cruise ships from dumping untreated sewage within three miles from shore. International law mandates cruise ships wait until they’re 12 miles out to discharge waste. One a vessel passes sails past the marker, however, no laws prevent them from dumping.