National Parks Zero Landfill Initiative

National Parks Conservation Association, Subaru of America and the National Park Foundation partnered with the National Park Service, private sector park concessionaires and gateway communities from three iconic national parks - Denali, Grand Teton, and Yosemite in a pilot project the Zero Landfill Initiative(ZLI) with the goal of reducing the amount of waste national parks send to landfills while supporting sustainable practices.

On average, the National Park Service (NPS) manages nearly 70 million pounds of trash nationally. That equals the yearly waste generated by 43,557 average Americans. If you include trash managed by park concessionaires, that number more than doubles.

Together, we worked at three pilot parks, to better educate and engage visitors about the amount of waste in our national parks and what they can do to help. We also engaged park staff, concessionaires and surrounding communities about how to lessen their environmental footprint in and around our national parks.

In the six-year span of the initiative, the three pilot parks have recycled or composted nearly 17 million lbs of waste that would otherwise have been landfilled. That’s equivalent to 607 fully loaded large dump trucks.

An important part the ZLI legacy is the gathering data, communication materials, toolkits, and best practices for the use of others looking to create their own waste reduction initiatives. These resources are important contributors to the success of the ZLI.