Parks Director Jarvis, Bowing to Coca-Cola, Halted Plastic Bottle Ban in Grand Canyon

[The Straight Story]

Parks Director Jarvis, Bowing to Coca-Cola, Halted Plastic Bottle Ban in Grand Canyon

Officials at Grand Canyon National Park were planning last year to ban all plastic bottles from the scenic treasure in order to reduce litter. But National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis scuttled the plan after Coca-Cola, a major donor to the National Park Foundation, objected.

Stephen Martin, the former top parks official at the Grand Canyon, said his boss told him last December that Coca-Cola, which sells Dasani water bottles and has donated more than $13 million to the parks, had questioned the bottle ban through the foundation.

“That was upsetting news because of what I felt were ethical issues surrounding the idea of being influenced unduly by business,” Martin told The New York Times. “It was even more of a concern because we had worked with all the people who would be truly affected in their sales and bottom line, and they accepted it.”

The Park Service had already installed filling stations for reusable bottles when the plan was halted. Jarvis cited “concern for public safety,” while a Coca-Cola spokeswoman, Susan Stribling, told the Times that banning plastic bottles was limiting freedom of choice.

http://www.allgov.com/Controversies/ViewNews/Parks_Director_Jarvis_Bowing_to_Coca_Cola_Halted_Plastic_Bottle_Ban_in_Grand_Canyon_111111

[HopeHoops]

1. You know, if enough people throw their plastic bottles into the Grand Canyon...

It will eventually be filled to the brim and then they can put a WalMart on top of it and the wingnuts can stop trying to explain it as the result of Noah's flood or God testing our faith or something else equally silly.