‘World Oceans Day’ is a way to celebrate our world’s shared ocean and our personal connection to the sea, as well as to raise awareness about the crucial role the ocean plays in our lives and the important ways people can help protect it.
The United Nations’ World Oceans Day has been celebrating the ocean on 8 June every year since 2002, and as part of our Corporation-wide ‘Operations Oceans Alive’ we also support this important celebration.
At Carnival UK, our highest responsibilities and our top priorities are to operate safely, to protect the environment, and to be in compliance everywhere we operate in the world. Operation Oceans Alive is an ongoing call to action for all employees to be HESS heroes and to care for and protect our oceans, seas, and waterways from environmental harm, ensuring their ecosystems, plant life and aquatic animals thrive, both now and in the future.
Playing our part – ocean sustainability at Carnival UK
Our magnificent ocean is home to our fleet of nine Cunard and P&O Cruises ships. As such we have a responsibility and commitment to preserve and protect it today and for future generations. This is why, as part of our dedication to sustainability, we have a number of environmental initiatives that are focused on looking after our ocean – they include:
- Purchase more seafood from sustainable sources
- Waste water purification
- A reduction in our carbon footprint
- Reducing our use of single-use plastics
- Using environmentally-friendly bio-degradable oil in our thrusters
- Reducing food waste from entering the ocean
These initiatives, to name a few, require us to live our Culture Essentials behaviours – namely Speak Up, Improve and Respect & Protect – in order to minimise the negative impact we have on the natural environment and help to protect our ocean for the long term.
This year’s topic for World Ocean Day 2021 is ‘Life and Livelihoods’ so we wanted to share a little more about two of the initiatives that are delivering positive impact for our ocean:
- Sustainable seafood
- Our oceans and the global fish and seafood supply are vulnerable. Fish and Seafood sources are depleting and there are many rated by the Marine Conservation Society as high impact, where regional fishing or farming methods are having a detrimental impact on biodiversity and the environment.
This is why our policy is to never source seafood that is rated as high impact, threatened or endangered and to follow the Marine Conservation Society’s published guidance to purchase more seafood that is sustainable.
It is essential for CUK to build supply chain visibility in order to improve our understanding of the current impact of our sourcing practices and to review our approach in order to continuously seek better, more responsible sources where ever possible. This is an ongoing journey that we’re committed to.
The Marine Conservation Society’s guide also provides advice on which sources have achieved sustainability certification. Sustainability certification is complex and all supply chain members must meet criteria in order to demonstrate that only produce from sustainably certified sources reaches the end consumer. This is required in order to be able to make the claim that produce has been responsibly and sustainably sourced and to be able to use recognised logos. We’re therefore also working closely with our suppliers in order to evidence where this is the case and explore ways to source more certified produce.
- Single use plastics (SUPs)
- We’re committed to reducing non-essential single-use items, including plastics, wherever possible on board our ships and finding more sustainable alternatives.
You may have heard about the substantial progress we’ve made in reducing single use plastic consumption across our CUK brands since 2019, including cotton buds, garnish picks, individual yoghurt pots, cling wrap, and individual sauce sachets – to name a few.
To continue this momentum the next phase of SUP reduction is to review all primary, secondary and distribution packaging and we have now completed an assessment of all items purchased across Hotel and Food and Beverage.
To prioritise our approach, we’ve identified the top items based on highest volume/value lines, Guest and crew facing plastic packaging and most frequently used plastic material types (e.g. food grade plastic). Our plan is to engage with our suppliers to improve our data on these items and where packaging is essential to product integrity, safety and hygiene, identify opportunities to switch to more sustainable solutions. As part of this we also plan to explore options for the reuse and recycling of essential SUPs.
Our expectation is that opportunities found for these initial items could be expanded across the whole product range.
We look forward to sharing further information with you regarding our long-term 2030 sustainability agenda in the coming months.
Let’s celebrate our ocean…
Not just today, but every day, by recognising how essential it is for life and livelihoods.
We’re on a journey to continue to find ways to look after our oceans and minimise the negative impacts we have on all natural environments we inhabit. Not only do we all have a part to play in respecting and protecting our oceans but we want to make more sustainable choices to safeguard what we have for future generations. There is more we can all do to make a difference.
Get involved
To see and participate in this year’s celebrations, visit www.WorldOceansDay.org
Follow @WorldOceanDay on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn using the hashtags #WorldOceanDay and #ProtectOurHome. Share your photos with us on Instagram by tagging @CarnivalUKComms and we’ll share your posts.