Coca Cola started off fighting the ban, but when the publicity spotlight turned on, they backed off.

The view from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon is stunning. Red-striped cliffs extend for miles. Tendrils of the Colorado River wind throughout the landscape. What you can't see from this pristine vista is the trash - nearly 3,000 tons of it - produced by the 4 million people who come to Grand Canyon National Park each year. Thirty percent of that waste (887 tons) is plastic water bottles. That's nearly 34 million containers, which, laid end to end, would stretch from the park to the Arctic Ocean.
To address this problem, in 2009, then-park superintendent Stephen Martin proposed a ban on the sale of plastic water bottles in the park. The move was part of a comprehensive National Park Service (NPS) initiative to eliminate waste and reduce the carbon footprint of the parks. It was a bold idea, considering that authorized vendors in Grand Canyon rake in $400,000 from water sales every year, but it wasn't unprecedented: Utah's Zion National Park had banned plastic water-bottle sales in 2008, removing 60,000 bottles from its waste stream and winning an NPS award as a result." snip -

Call me when the floating island of garbage between California and Japan begins selling lots to build on... maybe Donald Trump will buy the "island", and then go bankrupt when his high rise plans don't quite work out...

Word that the Park Service had bowed to corporate interests prompted a swift and vocal public outcry. Over 100,000 people signed a petition drafted by an anti-plastic organization urging the NPS to allow the Grand Canyon to ban bottled-water sales.

Five weeks after news of the NPS's backroom dealings broke, thanks in part to public pressure, Jarvis reversed himself, signing a national policy that allows superintendents to enact a ban - after they perform a cost-benefit analysis and provide written proof that their parks meet a long list of guidelines governing visitor health and safety. "[The National Park Service] must be a visible example of sustainability," Jarvis said in a statement.

Thank goodness for the internet and email and the ability to swiftly bring people together. This is just one more success story of that.

Shouldn't every individual be responsible for taking their own trash out of the park, so we can avoid this heavy handed government regulation, and let Coca Cola and the plastic industry create more jobs?

The only downside is the trash can and dumpster pickers often make a mess and/or loiter/trespass on properties looking for, or waiting for deposit containers.

I dunno - just about everywhere in the world has bottle deposits, here those laws are fought tooth and nail by the bottling industry.

To carry on my current schtick, the beverage companies are not being very personally responsible for the trash they generate.

Just like tort reform, "personal responsibility" is for "the little people".

Well, wouldn't that be ideal? And if they don't, shall we just let it lay there?

I can't imagine how much either both have grown by now.

LOL!
Seriously, when is that pile of radioactive sh1t supposed to hit our coast?