Sponsors (47)
The bill reduces single-use plastic and improves public-health oversight in parks, but shifts upfront costs and operational burdens to parks, concessioners, taxpayers, and visitors and creates risks if safe water access or implementation is insufficient.
Visitors and nearby communities will encounter less single-use plastic in national parks, improving park aesthetics and reducing hazards to wildlife and ecosystems.
Visitors will gain more water refill stations and education that encourage reusable bottles, lowering long-term consumer costs and reducing reliance on purchased bottled water.
Visitors benefit from required input and monitoring by the NPS Office of Public Health, which helps ensure drinking water safety and tracks dehydration or disease risks.
Visitors who rely on buying bottled water could face reduced availability or higher out‑of‑pocket costs if parks phase out disposable bottles.
Parks, concessioners, and taxpayers may incur upfront costs to install and maintain refill infrastructure, which could be passed to visitors through higher prices or reduced services.
Contractual and operational changes with concessioners and cooperating associations could create administrative burdens and transitional service disruptions for park operations.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires the NPS to create a program (within 180 days) to reduce disposable plastics and, where feasible, stop selling bottled water and other single‑use plastics in parks with regional implementation and biennial evaluations.
Requires the National Park Service Director to create, within 180 days of enactment, a program to reduce disposable plastic products across units of the National Park System and to eliminate the sale and distribution of disposable plastic products where feasible. Regional directors must implement the program, prioritize eliminating sales of bottled water and other single‑use plastics to the greatest extent feasible while considering cost, infrastructure, contract impacts, safety, and public health input, and submit program evaluations every two years.
Introduced May 23, 2025 by Mike Quigley · Last progress May 23, 2025