Wilderness and Littering

Imagine hiking five miles into a wooded wilderness and finding a beautiful stream. Imagine sitting and listening to the sound of the stream rushing over the rocks, the breeze blowing through the trees, the birds singing, and the sense of peace and solitude you would feel.

Now imagine the same setting but with empty water bottles, candy bar wrappers, plastic baggies, and clumps of toilet paper scattered across the landscape.

  

Litter effects our perception and our appreciation of wild places. It can take away from an otherwise beautiful experience and negatively influence our opinion of and our regard for a place. Would you plan a return trip or encourage others to visit a remote campsite you had visited and found covered in garbage?

Abandoned crab pots on a beach in Alaska

Lake litter picked up in the Boundary Waters, MN

Trash collected in Mt. Hood, OR

Litter also endangers wildlife in a variety of ways. An animal may ingest plastic from a food wrapper, become entangled in fishing line, or get stuck in a can or bottle leading to injury or death. Litter that contains scraps of food can draw wildlife to areas where people camp and habituate them to search for food in these areas. This behavior increases the chance of a negative human-wildlife interaction that often end with severe consequences for wildlife.  

Where does all this litter come from?

People may litter intentionally for a variety of reasons including misinformation (these apple cores are natural/biodegradable), laziness (it’s too much trouble to dispose of trash properly), and entitlement (somebody else will throw it away for me). In the backcountry there are additional reasons people may be more inclined to toss their garbage rather than pack it out including the added weight of the trash, unpleasant odors, the distance to the nearest trash receptacle, and a lack of a feeling of ownership or pride in our public lands.

Litter may also be unintentional. Unintentional littering in the backcountry typically involves containers and other trash that falls out of a backpack/pocket or that is created when wildlife get into food/trash and disburse it. In high use areas even unintentional littering can lead to the buildup of significant amounts of trash over time.

Cleaning up a beach on Admiralty Island, AK

Collecting trash around a lake - Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness, ID

What you can do to help prevent litter on our public lands:

• Follow Leave No Trace© practices. Wilderness Volunteers promotes Leave No Trace ethics and is a proud supporter and non-profit partner of the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics.

o   Plan Ahead and Prepare


o   Travel and Camp on Durable Surfaces

o   Dispose of Waste Properly


o   Leave What You Find

o   Minimize Campfire Impacts


o   Respect Wildlife

o   Be Considerate of Other Visitors

• Educate others about littering and proper waste disposal. Increased awareness about litter and its harmful effects is critical component of changing littering behavior.
• Plan adequately for bad weather and other contingencies.  Effective planning will reduce the chance that Leave No Trace practices will end up being sacrificed for safety.
• Buy food products for camping with the least amount of packaging possible. Less packaging means less to carry and less to pack back out.  
• Dispose of all waste properly.

o   Apple cores, banana peels, fruit pits, pistachio shells, sunflower seed hulls, etc. aren’t native to most environments and should packed out and disposed of with other trash.

o   Toilet paper is not “natural” or easily biodegradable and should also be packed out. Buried toilet paper can be easily dug up by wildlife and in some areas make take years to degrade. Burning toilet paper incorrectly can damage nearby flora and in the wrong conditions could start a forest fire.

• Pick up litter that you find and pack it out when possible. Removing litter that someone left before you not only cleans up the area, it reduces the chance that somebody else will litter in the same area again.
• Keep a resealable bag with you to store your personal trash. Having a handy place to put your trash makes proper disposal easy and a resealable bag helps keep odors contained.  
• Make sure to secure trash at night and when away from camp. The method of securing your trash will often depend on the area (bear boxes, hanging, etc.) but securing your trash will prevent wildlife from getting into it.
• Secure your food appropriately. Again methods may vary depending on the area but never leave food unsecured and unattended even for short amounts of time.
• Double check your campsite for loose articles and micro-trash before departing. Even if you are careful small items such as tent stakes, socks or small bits of food wrappers are often unintentionally left behind.   

WV trash clean up in Mt. Hood, OR

Wilderness Volunteers follows Leave No Trace practices (c) Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics: www.LNT.org

The Real Cost of Disposable Plastic Water Bottles

An average bottle of water only costs about $1.21 but what else does that bottle cost us?

Some scary facts about bottled water:

• In 1976 the average American consumed 1.6 gallons of bottled water each year
• In 2008 the average American consumed 28.3 gallons of bottled water each year 
• Americans are the world's leading consumers of bottled water, consuming four billion gallons per year.
• Sixty million plastic bottles end up in US landfills every day.
• Bottling water has produced more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide.
• It takes three liters of water to produce just one liter of bottled water.
• 1.5 million tons of plastic is used to manufacture water bottles each year.
• Only one out of every five water bottles is recycled.
• You can get approximately 450 gallons of tap water for the price of one bottled water.
• In the United States alone plastic bottle production consumes approximately 17 million barrels of oil per year.
• Disposable water bottles make up one third of all trash dumped in America’s national parks.

Since 2008 nearly 20 of our nation's national parks have banned the sale of plastic water bottles at their vending machines and concession stands in an effort to reduce park based greenhouse gas emissions and the amount of litter in the parks.

-Zion National Park banned the sale of bottled water in 2008 eliminating more than 60,000 bottles from the waste stream in the first year alone.

-In 2012 Grand Canyon National Park banned the sale of water packaged in individual disposable containers and began a "Reduce, Reuse, Refill!" campaign after finding that disposable bottles comprised 20% of the park's waste stream and 30% of the park's recyclables. Estimates indicate that over 40,000 bottles were removed from the waste stream in the first year.

These parks and almost 100 other parks are members of the Climate Friendly Parks Program, a collaboration between the National Park Service and the US Environmental Protection Agency to reduce the green house gases being generated by our national parks.

Save money and protect our public lands by ditching the bottled water habit and switching to reusable water bottles.

*photo by Leonard John Matthews