Plastic water bottles, utensils and all other single-use plastic products will not be long for U.S. national parks.
To commemorate World Ocean Day on June 8, the Biden administration announced a new multi-step initiative aimed at preserving and restoring the “health and productivity” of the world’s oceans.
As one of the steps, and in accordance with a prior executive order, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland issued her own order to minimize the procurement, sale and distribution of single-use plastic products on department-managed lands — including Utah’s five national parks.
The department hopes to phase out the material by 2032. However, several of Utah’s parks are ahead of the curve and have already begun taking steps to mitigate plastic waste, according to officials.
Capitol Reef National Park
Susan Fritzke, the superintendent of Capitol Reef National Park, said the park has already been working to reduce single-use plastic usage. Rather than having paper publications, brochures and maps wrapped in plastic, the park asked print companies to send those materials in cardboard boxes.
The Capitol Reef Natural History Association sells reusable utensil sets for those who buy food products from the park, and Fritzke added that the park has completely eliminated its use of plastic bags. It has turned to paper and other reusable materials as alternatives.
“It’s going to be fairly simple,” she told The Salt Lake Tribune. “We’ve made a lot of progress on this during the last few years, and it’s really a focus area for the park staff to try and come up with creative solutions.”
For example, Capitol Reef still sells plastic water bottles, but the superintendent said the park will place new labels on the bottles encouraging visitors to refill them at bottle-fill stations located throughout the park instead of tossing them after one use.
“This is something that we have all been focusing on for a long time,” she said. “So it’s really in alignment with where the park has been going in terms of trying to cut down on the use of plastic.”
Arches and Canyonlands national parks
A spokesperson for Arches and Canyonlands national parks told the Tribune that both parks eliminated single-use plastic vending machines and the sale of single-use plastic water bottles a decade ago.
The park bookstores now sell reusable water bottles, which visitors can refill at bottle-filling stations throughout the parks. Arches and Canyonlands have also made recycling available at both of their visitor centers.
Bryce Canyon National Park
Bryce Canyon National Park has worked to reduce its single-use plastic waste since 2014, a park spokesperson wrote in a statement to the Tribune. That year, the park launched its Hydration Program to encourage visitors to reduce single-use plastic waste by drinking from reusable water bottles and then filling them at bottle-filling stations.
Bryce Canyon installed seven bottle-filling stations and drinking fountains at its visitor center and popular park viewpoints in 2015. The Bryce Canyon Natural History Association sells reusable water bottles at their visitor center bookstore, and the association also donated eight solar-compactor recycling receptacles, which are available throughout the park.
A spokesperson for Zion National Park acknowledged a request for information about the park’s efforts to phase out single-use plastics, but did not provide more details as of Friday.
Previous order to reduce plastic use
The initiative to reduce single-use plastic waste in national parks follows an executive order issued in December 2021, which calls for federal agencies to minimize waste and support recycling.
The order also directed the Department of the Interior to make use of compostable, biodegradable or 100% recyclable products in lieu of single-use plastics to cut down the more than 14 million tons of plastic discarded in the ocean annually.
“Something that we, as citizens of the world, need to be aware of is that these things are having an impact and that there are some really simple changes that people can make in their own lifestyles that have a very significant impact on our environment,” Fritzke, with Capitol Reef, said. “And that’s what the National Park Service is all about.”
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