National parks like Yosemite must say goodbye to single-use plastic by 2032. Why wait?
National parks have a societal responsibility to play a leading role in reducing the harmful impacts of plastic waste.
So believes U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, who in June announced a Biden administration order to phase out single-use plastics on 480 million acres of federal lands. The ban of disposable plastic products — including bottles, cutlery, straws, bags and containers — takes effect in 2032.
“As the steward of the nation’s public lands, including national parks and national wildlife refuges, and as the agency responsible for the conservation and management of fish, wildlife, plants and their habitats,” the Interior Department is “uniquely positioned to do better for our Earth,” Haaland said in a statement.
While a significant step, there’s no need for officials at California’s nine national parks — including Yosemite and Sequoia & Kings Canyon — to wait until 2032 to do the right thing. Or pass away the next decade continuing to lead from behind.
Twenty-three national parks already prohibit the sales of bottled water, including two (Zion and Grand Canyon) whose annual visitation exceeds Yosemite. In place since Barack Obama was president, the ban prevented 5,000 pounds of plastic from entering the waste stream each year, according to a park service study.
Yet California’s national parks never joined the movement. And following the Trump administration’s wrongheaded reversal in 2017, they weren’t compelled to. Giving these parks and their concessionaire business partners the freedom to continue profiting from their sales of corporate-branded water while sloughing off the consequences.
While the impacts of plastics in our oceans is well-documented, a 14-month study conducted by researchers at Utah State concluded that 2 million pounds of microplastics — the equivalent of 123 million plastic bottles — settle on national parks and other public lands in the western U.S. each year. Meanwhile, a U.S. Geological Survey report found tiny plastic particles in water samples taken from high-country lakes in Rocky Mountain National Park as high up as 10,300 feet of elevation.
“It is raining plastic,” one of the scientists concluded.
While our country’s plastic pollution problem far exceeds any amount of bottled water sold at national parks, officials at Yosemite, Sequoia & Kings Canyon, Joshua Tree and the like have sidestepped their societal responsibility for too long. Instead of curbing the amount of plastic waste, they’ve added to it. Purely for the sake of profit.
U.S. recycling rates falling
In her order, Haaland notes that the U.S. is one of the world’s largest producers of plastic waste, with the Interior Department on its own creating nearly 80,000 tons of trash in 2020 alone. Moreover, recycling rates are falling as China and other countries have stopped accepting U.S. waste.
In 2016, Yosemite adopted what officials termed a “Zero Landfill Initiative” with the goal of reducing the nearly 2,220 tons of trash produced every year by visitors and staff. The park also has a strong recycling program.
Still, it stands to reason there would be less trash — and need for recycling — if visitors had to rely on reusable water bottles and refilling stations.
Grand Canyon and Zion have done without plastic water bottles for nearly a decade, and no one has died from thirst. There’s no reason why California’s nine national parks can’t follow suit, and well before the 2032 deadline.
Yosemite got some positive PR recently from a San Francisco Chronicle story that highlighted the park’s effort to reduce the number of empty propane canisters used to fuel camping stoves. Officials pulled single-use canisters from store shelves two years ago — well in advance of a state bill to legally ban them that currently awaits Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature.
A voluntary move by Yosemite, Sequoia & Kings Canyon, Joshua Tree and the rest to do away with single-use plastic bottles well in advance of Haaland’s 2032 deadline would elicit even better publicity.
Time for California’s national parks to place the health of our environment and ecosystem ahead of profit and convenience. Why wait 10 years when there’s not another moment to waste?
