A week after a campaign was mounted to encourage the National Park Service to phase bottled water out of the parks, the bottled water industry pushed back a bit, saying to do so would encourage visitors to turn to unhealthy alternatives to quench their thirsts.
In a release Tuesday the International Bottled Water Association said "(E)fforts to eliminate or reduce access to bottled water in our national parks will force consumers to choose less healthy drink options that have more packaging, more additives (e.g., sugar, caffeine), and greater environmental impacts than bottled water."
According to the group, research shows that in the absence of bottled water products, "63 percent of people will choose soda or another sugared drink – not tap water."
"We expect the same consumer response if access to bottled water is restricted in our national parks," said the group in the release. "And such a response will therefore not likely reduce the presence of plastic bottles within the recycling streams of our national parks."
Corporate Accountability International, a non-profit that works to encourage cleaner environmental habits, last week sent representatives to Yosemite National Park, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Independence Hall National Historical Park, and Mount Rainier National Park with over-sized postcards encouraging park officials to commit to phasing out bottled water.
Kristin Urquiza, who oversees the "Outside the Bottle and Public Works Compaign" for Corporate Accountability International, says more parks need to follow Zion, Hawaii Volcanoes, and Grand Canyon national parks in phasing out the sale of disposable water bottles.
To get more parks to phase-out bottled water, the non-profit has been working with stakeholders in and out of national parks, including concessionaires, "to help give Park Service (superintendents) the support they need to really move forward on implementing a 'bottled-water-free' policy in their parks," she said.
While none of the four parks has given "firm commitments" to moving forward with a ban, said Ms. Urquiza, talks have been ongoing to examine the feasibility of such a ban.
"The real exciting feedback that we've been getting is that water in the parks is an incredibly important issue for superintendents," she said. "They want to figure out how to minimize the amount of waste, to promote public water."
But the water bottlers say Americans want bottled water. "Consumers choose bottled water for several reasons, including its refreshing taste, reliable quality, zero calories and additives, and convenience," the organization said. "In fact, since 1998, approximately 73 percent of the growth in bottled water consumption has come from people switching from carbonated soft drinks, juices, and milk to bottled water.
"Banning or restricting access to bottled water in the marketplace, including within national parks, directly impacts the right of people to choose the healthiest beverage on the shelf. And for many, bottled water is a critical alternative to other packaged beverages, which are often less healthy. Bottled water must therefore be available wherever packaged beverages are sold."
The group does support ongoing efforts to "further increase the availability of clean, safe drinking water in national parks, cities, towns, on college campuses, in the work place, and at home should be encouraged. This, in fact, complements the National Park Services’ own ongoing healthy foods initiative. Bottle refilling stations and water fountains throughout national parks and communities are an excellent opportunity to help promote healthy hydration. But access to bottled water is also a key component of this effort and should not be discouraged, prohibited, or overlooked when discussing water’s role in a healthier lifestyle."
Comments
So, you won't admit to the absurdity of the numbers he sighted and you applauded?
So we should ban anything that could potential be litter? No candy bars, no food , no paper, plastic, glass, metal? Oh if it only saves one life - regardless of the consequences.
I think you'd fit in very well down there. Many kindred spirits for you to meet. :}
Lee, somehow I think you believe you are insulting me. I don't get the insult.
We had some good and bad water news in Utah today. Bad news - a lower than normal snowpack for the winter will leave our already low reservoirs lower. Gonna be a long, dry summer. Wildfires will be very interesting entertainment again this year.
Good news - our governor decided not to sign an agreement with the city of Las Vegas that would allow them to start work on a project to pump groundwater from the Snake Valley in Utah and the adjoining portion of Nevada. Las Vegas is growing rapidly and its supply from Lake Mead is shriveling along with the water level in the lake. They wanted to pump something like 130,000 acre feet of water annually with an option for even more to quench the thirst of their residents and casino fountains. Ranchers on both sides of the Utah / Nevada line are applauding Governor Herbert this evening. So, too, are the NPS people who try to protect Great Basin National Park. In such an arid area, replenishment of the aquifer is much too slow to allow that kind of extraction of water without destroying the valleys under which the water lies.
This has been a subject of great controversy for several years. The "agreement" was a very one-sided affair that grew somehow from some court actions. Refusing to sign it will probably toss the entire thing back into court. Meanwhile, the Utah militia in LaVerkin is preparing for any eventuality. Some folks think the United Nations may have influenced the governor's decision.
But all kidding aside, (well, sort of kidding. LaVerkin has a different mindset) this idea of pumping water from arid ranchlands to feed the mindless consumption of Sin City was never a good one. Especially when southern Utah's St. George is also growing. Growing so much, in fact, that the stalwarts down there who shout "cut government spending" one morning turn around the next day to seek approval of a tax-payer funded Federal appropriation to build a 200 mile pipeline from Lake Powell to bring more water to St. George. It's Utah's version of socialism: Socialize the expense. Privatize the profits.
Utah is the second driest state in the nation -- but has the highest per-capita water consumption of any of the others. Conservation is a word that is only now beginning to enter the vocabulary of a few citizens.
But here's an idea. Why not take all the bottled water that could no longer be sold in national parks and truck it to Las Vegas to pour into fountains or to St. George to be sprinkled on their Kentucky blue grass?
Lee, this may shock you, but I too condemn municipal expansion beyound the bounds that local, renewable water supplies can support. Denvers front range is sucking water out of their aquifers at a far greater rate then they are refilling yet the expansion continues at a blistering pace.
ecbuck the numbers I quoted were from a published article; http://archive.mensjournal.com/grand-canyons-plastic-problem
If they are wrong as you say, then thanks for being a fact checker. I would tend to believe that at a place where water is important, that it does make a lot of trash and could easily be 30% of all trash at the Grand Canyon. Making less trash still makes sense to most of us.
David,
Mens Journal didn't cite a source and as my math showed, the numbers just aren't credible.
As to "less trash makes sense", such an opinion is meaningless in a vacuum. Every decision has benefits and COSTS!. You have to balance the two. What are the benefits of a ban? As was mentioned earlier, mostly symbolic and even then, it is symbolic of questionable goals. What are the costs? Inconvenience to millions of visitors who like bottled water, loss of revenues to the park, potentially pushing people to less healthy alternatives and who knows what other unintended consequences. Are those cost worth the nebulous benefits. Not in my opinion.
Oh, and by the way, the last time I stayed in a Grand Canyon accommodation, they had signs throughout the room saying "Don't drink the water". Like Mexico, it may be best to drink bottles rather from the tap when in the Grand Canyon.
EC,
What are the costs of a ban? Do you have figures that prove parks are losing revenues?
I wouldn't expect the parks to lose revenues, as I've pointed out before, because it's the concessionaires that sell the water, and they can replace any lost sales of bottled water with increased sales of bottled juices, sodas, etc, as well as those of reusable water bottles.
Where's the inconvenience to visitors? In fact, wouldn't this program be a benefit to visitors by saving them money in the long run by relying on reusable bottles and free water dispensed by the parks?
As to your math re number of bottles per pound, they seem a bit high according to some other calculations found on the Internet. Wiki Answers puts the number at 12 12-ounce bottles per pound, based on "Hawaii's segregated rates for beverage containers..based on California model." That translates to 24,000 bottles per ton, or 21.2 million per 887 tons. I would tend to agree that that's still an awful high number per person, and that a more detailed accounting from the park (how many 32 or 64 ounce bottles are involved?) would be great to have.
That said, I would argue that hiking down a trail and not encountering trash such as discarded water bottles or candy wrappers is not a nebulous benefit, nor are the savings from not having park staff picking up litter, from not having to truck in all those cases of bottled water, from not having to keep it chilled.