Don't Feed the Landfills: Cutting Waste in Denali, Grand Teton and Yosemite

The problem

More than 300 million people visit the national parks each year, and they bring in and leave behind a great deal of trash — plastic, food, discarded camping gear and more — which the National Park Service has to manage.

The initiative

The Park Service, the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), the National Park Foundation (NPF) and Subaru of America created the multi-year "Don't Feed the Landfills" initiative at three pilot parks:

• Denali
• Grand Teton
• Yosemite

Since its 2015 launch, it has kept more than 16 million pounds of waste out of landfills.

What made it work

• Local partners. Solutions were tailored to each park with community partners and concessioners — Grand Teton Lodge Company, Signal Mountain Lodge, Yosemite Hospitality, Aramark, Doyon Limited Aramark, the Denali Education Center and NatureBridge.
• Reaching visitors before, during and after their trips about waste and what they can do.
• Nearly 1,000 clearly labeled recycling containers in busy areas, making it easier to sort correctly, along with encouragement to use reusable bottles, bags and cups.

Why a car company?

In 2004, Subaru's plant became the first U.S. automotive assembly plant to reach zero-landfill status, and it offered that experience to the Park Service and its partners. Subaru is also the National Park Foundation's largest corporate sponsor, supporting its outdoor exploration, parks-of-the-future and resilience programs, and has given more than $68 million to organizations working to conserve national parks.

What's next

The pilots produced a road map other parks can follow. The Park Service's sustainable operations branch said the lessons and relationships from the project would help many more parks become better stewards.

Five ways you can help

1. Plan and prepare. Think about what you bring and whether the park can recycle or compost it. Choose reusable items and take them home; avoid buying single-use items in the park.
2. Go digital. Use a phone app instead of a paper map where there is service.
3. Bring a reusable coffee mug — or buy one at a visitor center or concession.
4. Bring a refillable water bottle and use the parks' refill stations.
5. Bring reusable bags for your supplies.

Video: how Subaru and the Park Service reduce park waste.

Sources

Based on "Teaming Up to Keep Park Waste Out of Landfills," Sustainable Operations and Maintenance Branch, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The article gives the parks' yearly trash as nearly 70 million tons in its text and 70 million pounds in a partner graphic, and likens 16 million pounds to "one million garbage trucks"; those figures are left out here. It also calls the NPCA the "National Parks Conservation Fund" once. Photographs credited to the park and its partners and the partners' graphic are not reproduced.