Local Park Focus Of Campaign That Discourages Selling Plastic Water Bottles
By Kim Glovas
VALLEY FORGE, Pa. (CBS) -- Valley Forge National Park is the focus of a campaign to encourage concessionaires to stop selling plastic-bottled water.
Organizers of the "Think Outside the Bottle Campaign" are asking the park's superintendent to go bottled water free. The campaign's Rebecca Laden says our national parks should be protecting our natural resource, water, by discouraging plastic bottles.
She says the alternative,"selling re-usable water bottles with the park's logo which, in so many ways, is better than selling a plastic water bottle, because not only do you have something that's reusable, and environmentally sustainable, but you have something that's free advertisement for the park."
Seventy-five national parks have already joined the campaign, and installed water refilling stations on their trails.
Zion National Park in Utah estimates that 60,000 plastic bottles were removed from the waste stream, annually, after it stopped selling them.