Thursday, Sept. 14, 2017 | 2 a.m.
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National parks are supposed to serve as models for sustainability and environmentalism. People go there to escape the everyday contaminants of modern life.
Recently, the Trump administration ended the ban on the sale of bottled water in national parks, a restriction that had been in place for six years. This decision promotes waste and crass consumerism at its worst.
Plastic water bottles, like all plastics, do not naturally decompose and also cause pollution to produce. The easier option is to simply use refillable water bottles and encourage a reusable culture where objects are made to last and not be thrown away. This announcement follows President Donald Trump’s executive order to shrink or eliminate 27 of our national monuments, which would open up pristine land untouched by human activity to corporate interests that have no interest in being stewards of our environment.
Two of these national monuments — Gold Butte, and Basin and Range — are right here in Nevada. Instead of preserving the natural wonders of our nation, this administration wants to fill them with trash.
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