With some of our more popular national parks becoming ever more ‘civilised’ and ‘commercial’ it is interesting to speculate on where it might all end.
Certainly, the experience at perhaps the world’s most iconic national park, that at the Grand Canyon in the US, is a sobering one.
This spectacular natural wonder has long been sullied by excesses of litter, with plastic bottles being the most common item of rubbish found in the canyon. There is a growing feeling however that enough is enough, and more than 90,000 people have now joined a campaign calling for plastic water bottles to be banned in the park.
Zion National Park, in the state of Utah instituted a similar ban on the sale of water bottles in 2008 which eliminated 60,000 plastic bottles from the park in its first year.
The Grand Canyon National Park had been due to implement its ban back in January but it was put on hold at the last minute.
Park officials said it had decided to get more information before acting.
“Reducing and eliminating disposable plastic bottles is one element of our green plan,” a spokesperson said. “This is a process, and we are at the beginning of it.”
However, environmentalists say the real reason for the delay is the lobbying efforts of Coca-Cola, which has donated more than US$13 million to the parks.
Coca-Cola says it would rather help address the plastic litter problem by increasing recycling. “Banning anything is never the right answer,” said a company spokesperson.
Discarded plastic bottles account for about 30% of the park’s waste.
