In an crusade to tackle its titanic trash trouble , Grand Canyon National Park has set out a programme for its South Rim web site to become the first in a US national car park to use almost completely reusable foodware .
It ’s no surprise that so many hoi polloi want to visit home parks – they ’re home togeological wonderment , traces of ourancient ancestors , and some ofour favorite fauna . The hassle is , with a lot of people usually comes a lot of scrap – well-nigh 70 million tonsof it , in fact . harmonise to a report produced by non - profit the5 Gyres Institute , 81 percent of that waste is plastic .
While some waste is land along and left by tourer themselves , pot of rubbish is also generated by parking lot food for thought vendors . At Grand Canyon , concessioners give out around eight single - use foodware detail with every transaction – that rack up to over 7.2 million in a class .
It ’s easier said than done to cope all of that wastefulness , so the National Park Service ( NPS ) and National Park Foundation ( NPF ) put out a call for help : follow up with an innovative way to trim back , reuse , and recycle theplasticused , and they ’ll give you $ 400,000 to bring it to life .
The winner of that grant was a collaboration between reuse movement government agency Upstream Solutions and two parkland vendors , Delaware North and Xanterra Travel Collection . Together , they ’re aiming to consult with fellow vendors , the park and its conservancy , and the local community to estimate out the best elbow room to put their plan into action .
It ’s hoped the solution of that will be a system where reusable – and , significantly for a land site with a big demand for food for thought and drink , durable – foodware is collected , cleaned , and continues to be used .
“ NPF is thrilled to sustain the first reuse program of this scale in a home commons gateway community through Upstream , ” say Ashley McEvoy , Director of Resilience and Sustainability at the NPF , in astatement . “ This programme will help support the Secretary ’s goals to phase out single - economic consumption plastic on all DOI ( U.S. Department of the Interior ) managed lands . ”
There ’s also plenty that visitors can do to reduce the waste engender at home parks . The “ Do n’t Feed the Landfills ” initiative , first launched in 2015 at the Denali , Grand Teton , and Yosemite National Park , gives five main pointer on how to do so :
