The War on Straws

I’m sure like myself you are no stranger to the devastating effects that our species and our lifestyles are having on our planet, the TV is full of documentaries, the leaders around the world are discussing it and the stories float around continuously in the media and on social network sites. We’ve all seen the pictures of the beaches covered in plastics. The turtles, birds, whales and dolphins entangled in discarded fishing nets or found starved with their stomachs full of waste plastic. We all agree its awful, but we continue in the same way we always have not able to accept that we must change or perhaps thinking that the actions of just one human isn’t enough to have an effect.

You will hopefully be pleased to hear that the cruise lines atleast are taking the issue very seriously and are doing their bit. Many of them have grand plans for environmentally friendly ships, some are already building them but most of them are already tackling the issue on single use plastics. Lets see who’s leading the way.

MSC cruises are phasing out plastic straws by the end of this year but have further pledged to remove all single use plastics from their fleet by March 2019.

Norwegian Cruise Lines (also Oceania & Regent Seven Sea’s now owned by NCL) have banned plastic straws fleet wide and also on their privately operated islands in the Bahamas and Belize.

Seabourn has stopped providing straws and plastic lids on on disposable coffee cups. They can still be requested but they plan to roll out a ban on all single use plastics in the future.

Royal Caribbean, Celebrity & Azamara are working on an initiative to ban all single use plastics and are sourcing sustainable alternatives. Apparently paper straws are no good for milkshakes which is causing them somewhat of a head scratcher!!

Disney Cruise Line have pledged to remove straws and stirrers from its ships by mid 2019 and aims to reduce plastics in its cabins by 80%.

P&O Cruises & Cunard have promised to abolish all single use plastics from all of their ships by 2022.

Virgin Voyages – the new cruise line developed by Sir Richard Branson will debut their first ship in 2021 and will have no single use plastics on board what so ever. No straws, bottled water, other beverage bottles, condiment packets, shopping bags, food packaging, take away coffee cups or stirrers. Virgin’s focus for the new line is sustainability and will be the first cruise line to adopt the Climeon Ocean clean energy system which turns waste heat into clean burning energy. Clever stuff.

Not everyone wants to read on and on about climate change, the environment and sustainability. But the fact is if we continue the way we are, there wont be much of a planet left for our future generations to enjoy. We need to change and even little things like using your own shopping bag and drinking from a reusable bottle instead of buying disposable ones regularly can make a difference – imagine if every single person on the planet did that!

Our current plastic situation is so severe that Scientists are predicting that by 2050 our oceans will contain more plastics than fish. That’s just 32 years away!! I know for sure that I don’t want to have contributed to this prediction becoming a true statistic, do you?