More and more parks are installing water-filling stations, such as this one at Arches National Park/Kurt Repanshek
Nearly two dozen units of the National Park System have instituted bans against the sale of disposable water bottles, a move proponents say will greatly reduce trash.
For most parks, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, disposable plastic water bottles represent the biggest source of trash that parks must pay to haul away, averaging nearly one-third of all solid waste in parks surveyed.
"Ending sales of plastic bottles in national parks has gotten off to a slow start due to the influence of Coca-Cola, whose Dasani bottled water is one of the top sellers, on top National Park Service officials," PEER maintains. "In 2010, just days before a long-planned plastic bottle ban at Grand Canyon National Park was to take effect, NPS Director Jon Jarvis blocked it at the company's behest. Even more significantly, NPS abandoned its plan to end disposable water product sales in 75 percent of all visitor facilities by 2016."
However, after the matter gained public attention the Park Service director relented, though he issued a directive that required parks to extensively study the impacts of instituting such a ban before they would be permitted to do so.
The analysis required elaborate assessments that included a review of the amount of waste that could be eliminated from the park; the costs of installing and maintaining water filling stations for visitors; the resulting impact on concessionaire and cooperative association revenues, and consultation with the Park Service's Public Health Office.
The analysis also dictated the consideration of "contractual implications" to concessionaires, the cost and availability of BPA-free reusable containers, and signage so visitors could find water filling stations.
Perhaps due to the controversy, only a handful of national parks adopted bans under the new policy in 2012, its first full year. In 2013, records obtained by PEER indicate that no park that sought a bottle sale ban was turned down and another six parks went bottle-free:
* Colorado National Monument;
* In Texas, Pecos and San Antonio Missions national historic parks;
* In North Carolina, the Outer Banks Group; and
* In Utah, Natural Bridges and Hovenweep national monuments.
Beyond the 23 parks in 10 states that already do not sell plastic water bottles, California's Golden Gate National Recreational Area, the most heavily visited national park, and Florida's Biscayne Bay National Park, are both installing water 'filling stations' to provide free water to visitors. In addition, Washington's Mount Rainier National Park indicates it is working on a ban, according to PEER.
"From desert to ocean parks, from remote wilderness to urban enclaves, the drive to remove the blanket of discarded plastic bottles appears to be slowly regaining momentum," said PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that NPS replaced its goal of a ban on bottle sales at 75 percent of facilities with a vaguer target that parks cut solid waste streams by half by 2016, the year of the NPS Centennial.
"National Parks will be hard pressed to meet the goal of cutting their expensive and un-ecological solid waste load by half without addressing plastic bottles -- the single largest source of trash in most parks," said Mr. Ruch.
Word that nearly two dozen parks had banned the sale of the plastic bottle was praised by Corporate Accountability International, which long has lobbied for the ban.
"We applaud the more than 20 national parks that have ended the sale of bottled water on park lands, taking a critical step towards reducing waste and standing up as leaders within the park service by protecting water as a public good," said Erin Diaz, director of the Think Outside the Bottle campaign at the organization.
'With the support of our members, allies, and hundreds of small businesses, organizations and park partners, Corporate Accountability International is calling on the the National Park Service to end the sale of bottled water."
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Comments
Right, Lee. Actually, I think that in order for someone to feel bad about things like this they must have at least a skosh bit of insight into themselves and the unintended results of their actions. That isn't a universal quality.
Agreed. But then intelligent people also understand when an action creates only inconvenience and has no meaningful impact on the future.
Right. Which is why intelligent people recognize that this WILL have a meaningful impact on the future as it helps people learn the environmental costs of excessive use of plastics. Minimal inconvenience is a small price to pay for wise stewardship.
Saying that it creates "only" inconvenience is a pretty big stretch.
And Rick, you're right.
I'm still waiting for you [ec] to post your address so we can arrange a delivery of this insignificant amount of plastic bottle refuse to be dumped there. And will then wait for you to perhaps redefine 'inconvenience ...[with]... no meaningful impact on the future." Until you do, please get out of the way of the rest of us who wish to take what steps we can to clean up the mess we've made of this planet.
While action in a specific park may only be an action that creates "only inconvenience and has no meaningful impact" (which is hard to imagine in parks with the visitation of Grand Canyon, etc . . .), the takeaway/educational value that individual actions DO matter is priceless as folks move on with their lives . . .
Remember a couple of years when Traveler featured a couple of articles about a man at Padre Island (??) who was using trash he collected on the beaches to make sculptures of some kind? Most of it plastic, as I recall. Gonna have to see if I can find that.
Found it. It was actually Point Reyes. Here's a link:
/2011/03/these-ingenious-meta-bottles-carry-important-message-point-reyes-national-seashore7838
And from the article: ". . . James decided to save a year's worth of just the plastic bottles he collected along the shoreline. His plan was to store 12 month's worth of "disposable" water bottles he'd picked up and display them with the hope of encouraging people to use a refillable metal bottle--and stop buying plastic."
Kinda hard to look at those photos and continue trying to claim that disposable bottles are an "insignificant" problem isn't it? I'm waiting to see what ec has to say about this. I notice he had no comments when the article first appeared.
I am not standing in your way. If you want to not use plastic bottles fine by me.
BTW
This is what happens to those evil landfills to which plastic bottles contribute a minor percent.
https://www.wm.com/about/community/whc/wildlife-habitat-sites.jsp