When I read the theme for this month which is NO TO FOOD WASTE, I thought about the stories of my Mom, who just came back from a cruise on the Celebrity Millennium ship last week. She was telling me all about the 24-hour buffets and all the food that she would see being left on plates because people get too much food. That's always a problem with buffets because people tend to actually get more more food  than they  can chew.

Anyway, back to the cruise ships.  I researched and saw that a ship like the Celebrity Millennium could have about 2300 passengers or probably more. They probably serve 10,000 meals per day, so that's a lot of leftovers because if people know they have buffet, they will get more than they can consume or keep going back until they can't finish the food on their plate.  My Mom's cruise was 5 days which would be about 50,000 meals prepared by the kitchens.

There are laws in the seas that prohibit disposal of wastes otherwise heavy fines are imposed on those who dump in the water.  For example, laws of the United States prohibit dumping within 3 miles of the shoreline.   So what happens on cruise ships is they collect and segregate all the food wastes.  The perishables are then ground or pulverized (to the size of tiny planktons) and dumped far out into the sea and becomes food for the marine animals.

Cruise lines are thinking of other ways of protecting the environment.  For example, some ships have composting programs onboard their ships, so they produce a fertilizer that can be used for planting on land.  One cruise line is also converting food wastes into biogas that can be used to run cars. On the ships, they also have ways of recycling and reusing the greywater (that has no fecal contamination) for flushing and other non-potable uses.