Greenwashing on the Celebrity Solstice 3: refilling bottles, straws, and veggie meals

-

Caroline displaying a vegetarian dish on the Solstice.


For this episode of my discussion of "greenwashing" on the Celebrity Solstice, I want to mention 3 issues: straws, refillable bottles, and vegetarian meals.
As far as I can tell, there is not a single water bottle-filling station on this ship.  The water dispensers in the dining areas all have signs that state, no reusing of containers.  There's not even a bottle-filling fountain in the gym!  I guess when your business model involves selling beverages in bottles and cans, there's no room for reusable containers.  All day long, guests are carrying around drinks, the vast majority of which appear to be beer, sodas, and bottled water, in one-time-use containers.

 Two staff members mentioned that the reason for no refillable containers is to prevent "contamination."  This is patently absurd, given that 3000+ counties with local health departments in the US allow bottle-refilling stations, and - this is the kicker - people are doing it onboard anyway!  Yes, just watch one of the ice and water stations and there are people filling up their own bottles.  Given the "Save the Waves" program promoting reduce, reuse, and recycle, this discouraging of the use of reusable containers is... discouraging.  

 My recommendation?  Put a water bottle-filling station in the gym and one on deck 14 where there is a jogging track, and use the Solstice daily newsletter as a means of educating guests about this program.



 Straws:  If there was a product that is not necessary on a cruise ship, it is straws.  One time use, then gone (I assume incinerated on board).  There are 40,000 to 60,000 straws used on this ship every cruise.  I understand that straws may have a role with some medical conditions, make-up regimes, and ages, but really?  Is this a product to be encouraged on a ship in an ocean of trash?  It's not the biggest issue in the world, but as an educational program, it's a start.  Recycle, reuse, reduce.  There are billions of straws used every year, and then tossed.  Many find their way to the ocean.  Time to take a stand.

 My recommendation?  That straws be given to guests only when they ask for it (opt in), instead of guests having to ask for a straw to be excluded, and the Solstice daily newsletter be used as a means of educating guests about this program.
When you start looking for them, you'll find discarded straws everywhere.

Finally, I have to mention the availability of vegetarian meals on the ship.  The choices are quite limited (usually 1 option on the standard dinner menu).  There is a separate vegetarian menu, and even a vegan menu, but you have to ask for them and guests are given no instruction that they are even available.  We were on this ship for a month before we learned that there was a vegan menu (and there are only 7 rotating offerings... if you don't like or can't eat 1, tough).  Some of the vegetarian offerings on the menu are not that great (personal preference, of course).  So if there are limited choices, you don't have many options.

I mention this because the ship's food offerings emphasize red meats.  Given the impact of the cattle and pork industries on global climate change and on the environment in general, and on the waste from livestock production that often is deposited into the oceans, cruise ships should be keenly aware of providing tasty and numerous meat alternatives.

Alas, the cruise industry caters to an audience interested in, to use the words of Beldar Conehead, "eating mass quantities."

 So as the Celebrity Solstice promotes "Save the Waves," recycling, the WWF, and vague reef protection guidelines, they make sure their 2000+ guests consume vast quantities of red meats.

 My recommendation?  That a vegetarian meal be featured at the top of the menu, that at least 2 vegetarian entries are available at each meal, and the Solstice daily newsletter be used as a means of educating guests about this program.

Think a vegetarian can't be active and athletic?  Just ask Caroline!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Voyager of The Seas: giving guests a reason never to cruise again

-
Image
  A "veggie burger" in the Windjammer buffet.  If I wanted mashed potatoes, I'd choose mashed potatoes. After spending a month on the Anthem of the Seas , I was looking forward to a trip on a different ship. And this trip was going to include the entire family, some of whom had never cruised before, so I was looking forward to them being impressed with a week on the Voyager of the Seas. Voyager is a smaller ship than Anthem , so I knew in advance there were some missing amenities. Still, they were all part of the Royal Caribbean corporate ecosystem, so the overlapping elements, like the quality of the food and service or the accuracy of the "Cruise Compass" (a digital or paper calendar detailing everything there is to see and do onboard, from dining times to the location of trivia contests to where all the many musicians are playing) should be similar. It wasn't. The week we returned home, we canceled our future transatlantic cruise on the  Voyager. We neve...
Read more

The one, the only... Chobe National Park, Botswana!

-
Image
We were on our way to the famous Chobe National Park, in northern Botswana.  This visit was somewhat troubling for me.  In May, Botswana's president had announced an  end  to a five year ban on elephant hunting.  Elephant hunting?  There were calls for a boycott against Botswana.  Botswana is a bright spot for African savannah elephants, with over 100,000 in the country.  The proposal was to permit around 400 elephants to be killed by trophy hunters, who presumably would pay $30-50 thousand dollars to kill each of these animals (at $40,000 each, that would come out to $16 million).  There's roughly an equal number of elephants being poached for their ivory each year in Botswana.   I'm going to editorialize on hunting elephants for a moment.  Just scroll down to the white rhino photo below to skip my ramblings. But the overall populations of both forest and savannah elephants in Africa are in steep decline (espe...
Read more

The Tale of the Maui Mystery Cat

-
Image
In 2003, a jaguar was suspected of terrorizing residents of the Olinda area, Maui. Photo of a jaguar attacking a cayman in the Pantanal, Brazil, by Frank Schoen. Copyright: https://www.123rf.com/profile_djambi1969 . Used with permission.      In 2003, I was sitting in a Starbucks across from the Honolulu Zoo in Waikiki, reading the Honolulu Advertiser , when I came across an article about the sighting of a large, cat-like creature on Maui. I don't have that initial article, but I did find an archived copy of an article from Hawaii News Now on the topic: Wildlife officials are planning to intensify efforts today to capture a large catlike animal spotted in the lower Olinda area of Upcountry Maui. A search team sent out yesterday found evidence the animal does exist. They discovered tree trunks with deep scratch marks and a number of doves that appeared to be killed by a catlike paw. Wildlife experts plan to bait an existing trap today and add four more traps. Officials s...
Read more