Floating Festival Held on Environmentally Friendly MSC Orchestra
FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. (February 17, 2009) – Jam Cruise – the floating festival where everyone on board has a “back stage pass” – made yet another epic voyage this January, sailing for five days from Florida to Belize City, Belize and Costa Maya, Mexico on the elegant and environmentally friendly MSC Orchestra. While Jam Cruise is a celebration of music, it’s also a celebration of community and an opportunity to do something positive for the areas visited during the cruise. The Leaving a Positive Legacy program offers passengers a hands-on opportunity to help communities outside their own.
Jam Cruise worked with seven different schools and an orphanage in Belize and Costa Maya to create a communal wish list of necessities and invited passengers to donate items. Individual passenger donations filled an entire room on the ship with school supplies, clothing, shoes, sports equipment and musical instruments – the equivalent of four pallets of donations was collected in all. Nine laptop computers were also donated by Jam Cruise passengers and were refurbished, updated with wireless network cards, and provided to the schools. In addition to the passenger donations, Cloud 9 Adventures donated 10 solar ovens and Conscious Alliance donated a pallet of organic fruit leather.
Jam Cruise 7 also worked with Padres de Familia kinder in Km 55, a school in Costa Maya devastated by Hurricane Dean, to make much-needed repairs on the facility. Following the hurricane, all that remained was a simple cinderblock structure with incomplete plywood walls and a tar paper roof, offering students little to no protection from wind and rain. Cloud 9 Adventures sent $1420 to the kinder one month before visiting Costa Maya, allowing them to purchase construction materials for the needed repairs. While on the ship, passengers who became aware of the repair project matched that donation with an additional $1440 to help the kinder continue renovations.
It is fitting that the Leaving a Positive Legacy program was associated with a cruise on MSC Orchestra, a member of the MSC Cruises fleet. After all, MSC Cruises is at the forefront of safeguarding the environment and has received many national and international awards and certificates acknowledging the measures it has taken to protect the environment. The line’s newbuilds utilize the most modern technology to safeguard the environment, including a grey and black water treatment plant, energy saving across all cabins and public spaces, and non-toxic paints specially formulated for ship hulls.
To reduce Jam Cruise’s impact on the environment, its greening program has consistently achieved “carbon neutral” status for the past four years. This year, through a partnership with the Ashden Award-winning non-profit organization Trees, Water & People, Cloud 9 Adventures offset 100 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions from the five-day voyage. In addition, approximately 15 percent of passengers opted in to purchase offsets for their personal travel.
According to Allison Shaw, Assistant International Director of Trees, Water & People, Jam Cruise is their single biggest carbon offset donor. “The support we’ve received from Jam Cruise and passengers will allow us to plant almost 8,700 trees and build 38 fuel-efficient woodstoves
in Central America, offsetting a total of 1,155 metric tons of carbon dioxide! This amazing feat shows that being environmentally responsible and having fun are not at all mutually exclusive. I hope that other festivals will follow Jam Cruise’s environmental leadership.”
For more information about MSC Cruises, visit www.MSCCruisesUSA.com. For information regarding Jam Cruise, contact megan@madisonhousepublicity.com or carrie@madisonhousepublicity.com.
MSC Cruises currently has the most modern fleet in the world with nine ships: MSC Fantasia (the largest ship ever built for a European ship owner), MSC Poesia, MSC Orchestra, MSC Musica, MSC Sinfonia, MSC Armonia MSC Opera, MSC Lirica, MSC Melody, cruising in the Mediterranean year round and seasonally in Northern Europe, the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean, North and South America, the Indian Ocean and South Africa. MSC Splendida and MSC Magnifica will be launched, respectively, in 2009 and 2010. MSC Cruises is the only company to receive the "6 Golden Pearls" award from the Bureau Veritas in recognition of its high level of quality management and environmental protection.
No comments:
Post a Comment