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Looking At The National Park Service's Goal To Eliminate Plastic Bottles

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What symbolic role should America's national parks play in promoting environmental stewardship and sustainability in front of hundreds of millions of visitors a year?

National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis is determined to rid plastic bottles from the national parks, but wants to consider all factors before doing so, the agency's communications chief said today while addressing the uproar over the director's decision to put a hold on a water bottle ban at Grand Canyon National Park.

“Jon Jarvis wants to get rid of water bottles in parks. That’s the goal. We want to do this," David Barna said. "The issue with Grand Canyon is it’s such a big park and it sets such a big precedent."

The issue, though, has taken on the appearance of dollars and cents, the dollars being those made by concessionaires and bottling companies and even those donated to the National Park Foundation. It also has led to a petition drive on change.org, where more than 94,000 people have signed a petition in support of a ban.

Internal Park Service documents (see attachments) obtained by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility seem to indicate that corporate dollars played a larger role in the director's decision than concerns over visitor safety and the Park Service's intent to be a national leader in sustainability, says PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch.

That impression was driven home in an email PEER obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. In it Director Jarvis wrote that while he was supportive in general of the initiative, “there are going to be consequences, since Coke is a major sponsor of our recycling efforts.”

Mr. Barna this morning, while acknowledging the appearance of that email, maintained that financial considerations never played a role in the director's decision to put a hold on the ban of plastic water bottles at Grand Canyon.

“The issue for him was never about money. It’s not enough money to influence anybody. We’re talking about probably less than $100,000 a year from Coke. This is a $3 billion agency," the Park Service spokesman said, explaining that the $100,000 figure was tied to the bottling giant's contributions to help establish a recycling operation on the National Mall.

National Park Foundation officials did not immediately respond to a request this morning for comment on their role in the matter.

At PEER, Mr. Ruch maintained today that the internal Park Service documents demonstrate the director was acting in response to Coke's concerns and nothing else.

“I know he’s pulling the plug” on bottles at the Grand Canyon based on Coke’s displeasure, Mr. Ruch said, adding that the bottling industry was guiding Park Service policy.

To that end he cited a June 2011 email from Jo Pendry, the Park Service's commercial services chief, in which she wrote, "...the Director's view is NOT to ban sale of bottled water, but to go the choice route." "Choice" being that the Park Service provide visitors with a choice to either buy disposable water bottles or use refillable ones.

While Park Service officials previously mentioned safety concerns for park visitors if a bottle ban was implemented at the Grand Canyon, Mr. Ruch said safety was never mentioned in NPS documents or agendas for meeting with bottling companies and concessionaires.

"There is not a scintilla of documentation on that," he said.

A backdrop to this controversial story is the Park Service's "Green Park's Plan," which has a goal of reducing waste in part by offering water bottle refilling stations in at least 75 percent of park visitor centers by 2016, the year the agency marks its centennial. Part of that initiative is also to get concessionaires to stop selling water in disposable bottles and replace them with reusable bottles.

In the wake of that plan, however, the agency's "Concessions office has expressed a concern over these goals and asked the Director to consider the feasibility of these goals as it relates to concession impacts," reads a memo prepared in January 2010 by Shawn Norton, who works on climate change and sustainability issues for the Park Service.

According to Mr. Norton's calculations, not only would a ban on disposable bottles reduce waste and recycling costs, but it also would lead to sizeable savings in electricity usage. As much as 18 million kilowatt hours per year could be saved if 15 parks considering such a ban -- including Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Grand Teton and Death Valley -- implemented one, he noted.

Two parks that have moved in that direction, Zion and Hawaii Volcanoes, have seen mixed results, according to that memo. At Hawaii Volcanoes, where the cooperating association decided to stop selling disposable bottles, the association estimated it will gross $80,000 a year in reusable bottle sales and will net a profit. At Zion, concessionaire Xanterra Parks & Resorts, which came up with the idea of banning disposable water bottle sales, lost $25,000 in 2009-10, according to the memo.

However, the move at Zion reduced the waste stream by roughly 5,000 pounds annually and cut energy consumption in the visitor center by about 10 percent during 2009-2010.

"Due to effective outreach and communication, Zion National Park reports that visitor response is excellent," Mr. Norton noted.

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Comments

It is pretty cynical and apathetic to recognize that a 100% change is impossible, so why try to make a partial change.

We'll never get China to halt their industrial pollutants, so we shouldn't try to improve our own? Every plastic bottle less available for Timthy Tentpeg to discard on a trail is one less that I then have to pick up and carry out.

It takes a lot of nickels and dimes to add up to a buck's worth of change, and they are more than 'symbolic only'.


The hierarchy with respect to waste is:

   Reduce.

   Reuse.

   Recycle.

Note that "recycle" is last. Thus efforts should first be directed at the first option. A ban on bottled water, while making sure that refillable bottles are available with filling stations, is thus the preferred alternative.

As for a "multi-million dollar funding source for the NPS," we already have one. It's called taxes. There is sufficent wealth in this country to provide for the common good. It is simply a matter of our priorities as a nation that our parks are so underfunded.


Sorry Mike, I don't see the convenience of a plastic bottle as "waste".   Nor do I see why you want to confiscate money from others (via taxes) when someone is voluntarily willing to give it.


"a ban on disposable bottles reduce waste and recycling costs, but it also would lead to sizeable savings in electricity usage"
 
Seems to be a pretty reasonable goal.


Why - if you aren't buying the bottles you don't need to worry aboue the waste, recycling costs or electricity usage.


Could we all be paying a price indirectly, though?

What about the cost of cleaning up litter after careless people toss these bottles out the window?  What about the cost of air pollution from generating plants that must produce the electricity to produce or recycle the bottles?  What about the cost - perhaps not financial, but a cost just the same - of having some of our scenic places degraded by litter?

I know this probably won't satisfy you, but I'll bet there a lot of us out there who can clearly understand these costs and who are disgusted by them.


Coca -Cola is one of the most thugish international corporations around. Besides aggressively opposing container deposit legislation worldwide, they've also meddled in Mid-east foreign policy, violently busted unions in Columbia, and preempted local farmer's water supplies in Mexico. Camelback and Mike Painter both hit the nail on the head. Director Jarvis's pursuit of corporate cash sets the stage for even more corruption in the already ethically-challenged National Park Service.


ecbuck,

I'm not sure I quite follow the logic of your comment.  In any case, I was following up on Mike Painter's post, which happens to be in the spirit of Lee Dalton's above.  Recycling is a waste of money and energy with respect to the alternative: reusing.


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