Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises and Azamara Cruises Announce Environmental and Innovative Ship of the Year Awar
August 25 2009 - 1:08PM
PR Newswire (US)
MIAMI, Aug. 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Royal Caribbean
International and Celebrity Cruises announced the winners of their
annual environmental awards. For Royal Caribbean, Liberty of the
Seas was selected as both the Environmental Ship of the Year and
the Environmentally Innovative Ship of the Year. For Celebrity
Cruises, the Celebrity Mercury was selected as the Environmental
Ship of the Year, and the Celebrity Infinity was selected as the
Environmentally Innovative Ship of the Year. "Competing for these
awards encourage and reward crew members who progressively advance
their ships' environmental performance in ways that go above and
beyond regulatory compliance," said Jamie Sweeting, vice president
of Environmental Stewardship for Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. "I
congratulate our winners and thank all of our crew members for
doing so much to protect the oceans in which we sail," Sweeting
said. In its tenth year, this annual fleet-wide competition
underscores Royal Caribbean and Celebrity's long-standing
commitment to environmental innovation and improvement. For the
first time, a panel of judges conducted the impartial evaluation
for the award. The panel was comprised of leading oceanographic,
marine biology, and policy experts, who reviewed the information
provided by Royal Caribbean's 20 ships, Celebrity Cruises' nine
ships and Azamara Cruises' two ships to determine the award winners
based on their comparative performance. The ships were judged on
five rigorous environmental criteria established by Royal Caribbean
and Celebrity Cruises. These included environmental performance,
timeliness and effectiveness of corrective actions related to audit
findings, reports of near incidents and nonconformities, submission
of environmental status reports, performance of environmental
equipment and innovative thinking. For each of these criteria,
ships were scored individually and then ranked against one another
to determine the winning ships in each fleet. This year, Royal
Caribbean International's Liberty of the Seas won both the
Environmental Ship of the Year and Environmentally Innovative Ship
of the Year Awards for its excellent overall performance, having
one of the most thorough and wide-ranging environmental programs of
the entire fleet. The crew members demonstrated an exemplary level
of commitment to saving energy, reducing waste, and increasing
their amount of recycled materials. There was a particular emphasis
on learning and continuous improvement that included establishing a
water and energy savings team, as well as educating staff on how
freshwater is produced onboard and how wastewaters are treated. For
Celebrity Cruises, Mercury received top honors in the Environmental
Ship of the Year Award for its energy conservation, recycling
efforts and reuse initiatives. The Mercury was bestowed the award
most notably for its compliance and waste management, especially in
the face of a challenging itinerary. The ship's staff worked to
establish recycling in numerous countries along its cruise track.
Celebrity Infinity was awarded the Environmentally Innovative Ship
of the Year Award for effectively demonstrating how day-to-day
operational changes can be coupled with smart onboard insight and
engineering to produce an innovative approach to energy savings in
cooling the ship. Adding to their improvement is their continued
strong efforts in recycling, management of waste streams, and the
environmental honors received. The winning ships receive an award
they can display year-round, and get to select a non-profit
organization that will receive a cash donation on their behalf. The
organizations selected by the Environmental Ships of the Year
received a $10,000 donation, and $5,000 goes to the organizations
selected by the Environmentally Innovative Ships of the Year. Royal
Caribbean Cruises Ltd. is a global cruise vacation company that
operates Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises,
Pullmantur, Azamara Cruises and CDF Croisieres de France. The
company has a combined total of 38 ships in service and five under
construction. It also offers unique land-tour vacations in Alaska,
Asia, Australia/New Zealand, Canada, Dubai, Europe and South
America. Additional information can be found on
http://www.royalcaribbean.com/, http://www.celebritycruises.com/,
http://www.pullmantur.es/, http://www.azamaracruises.com/,
http://www.cdfcroisieresdefrance.com/ or
http://www.rclinvestor.com/. DATASOURCE: Royal Caribbean Cruises
Ltd. CONTACT: Cynthia Martinez, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.,
+1-305-982-2458 Web Site: http://www.royalcaribbean.com/
Copyright