Treehugger Highlights NPF’s Sustainability Work in National Parks
Treehugger details the challenges that waste poses to national parks and also outlines some of the many ways that NPF and partners are working together to offer solutions. Read an excerpt from the article, “The Trash Problem in National Parks,” below.
“The issue has prompted the National Park Foundation, the official charity of the NPS, to team up with private companies such as Subaru and Tupperware Brands to divert a reported 10 million plastic bottles from landfills per year. The NPF's Resilience and Sustainability program has already diverted nearly half of Denali, Grand Teton, and Yosemite's waste by improving recycling and composting infrastructure. Its waste reduction strategy includes more recycling, more composting, and dozens of water refill stations to help the ecosystems these parks aim to protect thrive amid surging visitation.
In 2021, the NPF announced a partnership with Tupperware Brands Charitable Foundation to install 65-plus water refill stations at Florida's Castillo de San Marcos National Monument, Fairbanks Alaska Public Lands Information Center, Nevada's Great Basin National Park, Virginia's Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts, Alaska's Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve, and the National Mall and Memorial Parks of Washington, D.C., with hopes of reducing the need for single-use water bottles.
The partnership also includes improving recycling infrastructure at Great Basin National Park and Yellowstone National Park and composting initiatives at Alaska's Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park and Arizona's Grand Canyon National Park. The recycling initiative is expected to divert nearly 10 million plastic bottles from landfills — a figure based on visitation statistics and the impact of a single refill station, says Ashley McEvoy, the NPF's senior program manager for resilience and sustainability.”