Ban on Single Use, Plastic Water Bottles in U. S. National Parks Removed

[Sea Save Foundation]

An Obama-era policy for national parks to voluntarily restrict plastic water bottle sales and encourage reusable water containers has been struck down by the Trump administration.

Sea Save Foundation Editorial: Our oceans are accumulating discarded plastic at an unprecedented rate. This reversal will result in additional nonbiodegradable blight in some of the most pristine and sacred parks in the world. It will also result in additional plastic in our waterways and eventually our oceans. Also alarming is that this decision is indicative of the lack of concern about plastic pollution on land in our oceans.

Read more here (story #2).

What are your thoughts?

 

[Dogbowl]

 

[Caveeagle]

I am all for any individual who makes decisions and choices to minimize their waste footprint.

I am not for most government rules that are ineffective and just further contribute to a top heavy bureaucracy.

I tend to refill my "one use" water bottles for kayak trips because they are lighter than a Nalgene bottle and easier to stow. They typically get used a few times and always get recycled.

BTW, I volunteer for trash clean ups on the local rivers and water bottles are a small % of what we haul in.

I see a bigger issue in overall consumer waste and packaging. It's just insane how much plastic, cardboard and foam gets used in packaging up our retail gadgets and do-dads.

I don't expect our government to ever get out of this, but I would really like to see some rational thought out into any efforts to control my life.

How about mandate labeling standards, similar to FDA, that call out %waste material, and % recycled etc.

I do work in the consumer packaged products field and can guarantee marketing teams care about this stuff when consumers are paying attention. Look at all the hype around GMOs, gluten and allergens.

 

[Lorenzoid]

I won't comment on the politics, but I have noticed that some liveaboards and marine parks are discouraging single-use plastic bottles and asking that visitors bring a reusable bottle. Some places offer a souvenir water bottle for sale. Such a policy will attract my vacation dollars. Plastic waste is a menace.

 

[Aviyes]

The original "ban" was flawed as mentioned in the story. Only water bottles were banned, yet they could sell soda and other drinks. Also, very hard to enforce. Are they going to setup car search points and confiscate those water bottles? Another feel good law that is not enforceable. Our government officials need to start considering these issues before making useless laws.

 

[Lorenzoid]

23 out of 417 national parks, including Grand Canyon National Park and Zion National Park, implemented restrictions on bottled water sales. The parks encourage visitors to use tap water and refillable bottles instead.

There's nothing "flawed" about a policy that may encourage people to do something. A policy, regulation, law, etc., doesn't need to be bullet-proof to be effective. Are speed limits "flawed" because people are often able to exceed them without getting caught? Speed limits encourage safer driving. Are tax codes "flawed" because enforcement is difficult, there are loopholes, fairness may be questionable, and so on? Yet tax codes are effective in doing the overall job of bringing in revenue. This modest policy was limited to bottled water sales in the parks--and it may have been reasonably effective in reducing plastic waste because people drink a lot of bottled water, sales of which have been outpacing sales of soda for years. Beyond water bottles, though, I suppose the belief was that if a visitor realized the intent of the policy, he might think twice before buying a soda in a plastic bottle or having his groceries packed in a plastic bag.

 

[elbig]

But the parks allowed plastic bottles of everything except water. So you could buy soft drinks but not water. That seems silly to me. Reversing the rule is fine with me. I agree that refillable is better but removing water but allowing carbonated sugar water is dumb.

 

[2airishuman]

I don't like the public policy ramifications of bottled water, which are far broader than the waste they generate when the bottle is empty.

But I never thought that restricting bottled water sales at a handful of parks was a useful step towards solving the problem.

 

[Lorenzoid]

But the parks allowed plastic bottles of everything except water. So you could buy soft drinks but not water. That seems silly to me. Reversing the rule is fine with me. I agree that refillable is better but removing water but allowing carbonated sugar water is dumb.

But how much bottled water versus soda do they sell? What if Grand Canyon National Park typically sells 1000 times more bottles of water than bottles of soda? Sales of water do generally exceed sales of soda. People know they're supposed to keep hydrated when they're outdoors, and they buy a lot of bottled water--probably a lot more than soda. Aiming at the largest part of the problem seems like a good start. There are simple and relatively convenient alternatives to bottled water, namely, drinking fountains and refillable water bottles. There aren't such alternatives for soda drinkers, so it makes sense to keep on selling soda in plastic bottles for the time being.

Grand Canyon National Park gets something like six million visitors a year, and my guess is that most of them buy a bottle of water at some point. That's a lot of plastic.

 

[doctormike]

But the parks allowed plastic bottles of everything except water. So you could buy soft drinks but not water. That seems silly to me. Reversing the rule is fine with me. I agree that refillable is better but removing water but allowing carbonated sugar water is dumb.

First of all, there was no enforcement, so it's not like you couldn't bring in bottled water. They just encouraged the parks not to sell it.

Secondly, the point is that we, as a community, have done an amazing thing in providing a clean water infrastructure that reaches to most places in the country. This is something that would have been unthinkable in previous eras, yet we kind of take it for granted. So since there is no nationwide public infrastructure that brings other types of soft drinks to citizens free of charge, the only way for them to get soda or other soft drinks would be to buy it in bottles. And no one is pretending that the government is going to keep you from drinking Coke or Gatorade.

Water, on the other hand, can be obtained from water fountains and other taps nationwide.

So the point is that water bottles are particularly bad, because they keep people from using an alternative that is much more environmentally friendly (specifically ocean friendly, for the purposes of this board).

And worse, most of those are just bottled tap water. So you are paying a markup of several thousand percent to a company that takes water provided by a public service using your tax dollars, puts it in bottles that will sit somewhere for the next thousand years in a landfill (or the ocean), and ships it around the country (or the world) using energy and generating greenhouse gases. All so that you can have the same thing that you could have for free in your refillable water bottle.