Carnival Corp will pay a $20 million settlement after Princess Cruises, a Carnival subsidiary, admitted to violating the terms of a 2017 settlement for improper waste disposal.
According to a court filing submitted on Monday, Carnival released food waste and plastic into the ocean, failed to accurately record waste disposals, created false training records, and secretly examined ships to fix environmental-compliance issues before third-party inspections without reporting its findings to the inspectors.
Monday's settlement requires Carnival to devote more resources to comply with the 2017 settlement and improve waste management.
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Monday's settlement requires Carnival to pay $20 million within seven days, receive additional ship inspections, devote more resources to ensure compliance with the 2017 settlement, reduce the number of single-use plastic items on its ships, and establish teams to improve waste management. If Carnival does not meet deadlines to revamp its compliance process for the 2017 settlement, it will have to pay additional penalties of $1 million-$10 million per day.
"Carnival Corporation remains committed to environmental excellence and protecting the environment in which we live, work, and travel," a Carnival representative said. "Our aspiration is to leave the places we touch even better than when we first arrived."
In 2017, Princess Cruises pleaded guilty to illegally releasing oil into the ocean and deliberately hiding the practice. Princess was ordered to pay $40 million as part of the settlement. Carnival has since been on a five-year probation term, during which it must allow a third-party inspector to examine its ships.
According to a report from an environmental-compliance inspector, Carnival violated environmental laws in the first year following the 2017 settlement. The inspector found over 800 violations of Carnival's five-year probation between April 2017 and April 2018, though the violations were accidental and disclosed by Carnival, the Miami Herald reported.
"These issues were unacceptable failures in our processes that were not in accordance with our policies and procedures, and do not reflect the culture we have built at Carnival Corporation and across our nine cruise line brands," a Carnival representative told Business Insider in April. "We have been taking steps to address the improvement areas mentioned in the report, and to build on the positive progress noted by the court-appointed monitor to make sure we are in full compliance moving forward."
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kttypo on June 4th, 2019 at 19:26 UTC »
It's backwards businesses like this that make me absolutely furious.
IAMATruckerAMA on June 4th, 2019 at 18:42 UTC »
And how much money did they save by dumping their garbage in the ocean for however many years they've been doing it?
phannilia on June 4th, 2019 at 17:59 UTC »
In these cases I always wonder: where does the (seemingly) arbitrary number of $20m come from?
For a Corporation with a revenue of $18.88 billion and a operating of $3.32 billion (in this case) this number does not hurt as much as it should. At least in my opinion.
(Values taken from http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9NzAzNDg4fENoaWxkSUQ9NDE1NTE4fFR5cGU9MQ==&t=1)