Visitors generated about 80,000 tons of solid waste at state parks in 2020, and much of it was comprised of plastics, according to the Department of the Interior.
The research platform TrashBlitz annually utilizes its data to piece together a report called “Plastic-Free Parks TrashBlitz” to examine the recorded plastic pollution that year and investigate all of the factors contributing to the pooled data.
This year’s report discovered that over four-fifths of the recorded trash was composed of plastic products by count. Making up 81 percent of the recorded trash, what factors play into such a large amount of plastic waste being improperly discarded at national parks?
