Celebrity Cruises Garners Environmental Protection Award

Celebrity Cruises' Century, Galaxy and Mercury have today been awarded Lloyd's Register's Environmental Protection descriptive note. The 70,000-gt Century; 76,000-gt Galaxy; and 76,000-gt Mercury are the first ships to be assigned EP descriptive notes.

The award recognizes Celebrity Cruises' compliance with Lloyd's Register's Provisional Rules for Environmental Protection. All vessels underwent a comprehensive process of plan appraisal, survey and audit to demonstrate compliance with Rules setting requirements for NOx and SOx emission levels from engines; restricting or prohibiting the use of ozone depleting refrigerant gases and fire fighting media; mandating essentially zero discharge to sea of oily wastes, treatment or holding of black and gray water, and effective garbage management and disposal.

The issue of organisms carried in ballast water was dealt with by a requirement for the adoption of precautionary measures to minimize the translocation of non-native organisms.

Prohibition of the application and use of TBT based antifouling paints is also phased in. In addition to the basic requirements, Lloyd's Register's Rules include optional, more stringent requirements covering: hull anti-fouling systems, ballast water management, protected fuel tanks, gray water treatment, NOx and SOx emissions, refrigerant gases and vapor emission control systems (VECS). Compliance with these additional requirements can be selected as required to highlight substantial investment in particular aspects of pollution control and is recognized by the assignment of supplementary characters to the notation. This system enables owners to tailor the environmental certification to emphasize their particular achievements while ensuring adherence to baseline environmental standards.

Accordingly, supplementary character, A, has been assigned to both Century and Galaxy in recognition of their use of tin free anti-fouling coatings.