{"id":757,"date":"2009-08-19T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-19T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/2009\/08\/greening-our-amusement-parks.html"},"modified":"2009-08-19T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-08-19T13:00:00","slug":"greening-our-amusement-parks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/08\/greening-our-amusement-parks.html","title":{"rendered":"Greening our amusement (parks)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"riding<\/span>
Kirsten & her very enthusiastic husband getting ready to ride another roller coaster<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

My husband is what you would call a roller coaster enthusiast<\/a>. By the end of this roller coaster riding season, he will have ridden 218 different roller coasters<\/a> and visited 53 amusement parks<\/a> since his obsession began at the age of nine when he rode his first roller coaster. Just from being his girlfriend, and now wife, I have ridden 93 roller coasters since 2006 (he keeps track of this number, not me). <\/p>\n

While these numbers are not as high as other enthusiasts out there, we certainly have spent a significant amount of time in amusement parks. And in that time, one of the big things that bothers me is all the trash<\/a> that I see being produced at the parks, particularly the large quantities of plastic bottles<\/a>, plasticware<\/a>, and Styrofoam <\/a>cups and plates. There is rarely a recycle bin in sight. In 2008, 122.7 million people visited amusement parks<\/a> in North America alone (186 million worldwide). That is a lot people creating a lot of trash.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\nNow I can often control how much trash I produce in my daily life, but
\nI get frustrated in my attempts to continue those habits when my
\nhusband and I visit amusement parks. Because it is a priority for us,
\nwe can find ways around some of the barriers. For example, we can bring
\nour own lunch in a cooler and go out to the car to eat. And we try to
\nuse the available water fountains in the parks instead of buying
\nbottled water (not only because of the environment, but also because of
\nthe cost). But often all of these tactics are inconvenient, require
\nplanning ahead, and can reduce the amount of fun that we have at the
\npark (I enjoy eating fried dough sprinkled with lots of powdered
\nsugar). And given the overflowing amount of trash bins I have seen at
\nthe many parks I have gone to, I don’t think many other individuals
\nhave taken the time to reduce how much they throw away.<\/p>\n

Which is why I was so excited to hear from my husband that Busch Gardens<\/a>‘
\namusement park in Williamsburg Virginia has gone green. He made an
\n“emergency” trip down there this past weekend because they are tearing
\ndown one of his top ten favorite roller coasters, the Big Bad Wolf<\/a>,
\nat the end of the season and he wanted to ride it one (or 10) last
\ntime(s). When he went to eat lunch, he happily discovered that they
\nwere using straws made out of paper<\/a>,
\ninstead of plastic, and the drinks do not come with plastic lids. He
\nalso learned that the park had put catch basins in place to collect
\ncondensation from the air conditioning (of indoor rides) and are using
\nthat to irrigate the park’s landscaping. Curious to find out more, I
\ndiscovered these are only a couple of the many changes that Busch Gardens has
\nmade. They state in one of their press releases<\/a> from 2008 that:<\/p>\n

“Park
\nofficials incorporated a single-stream recycling process into its waste
\nmanagement program after recognizing that most of the park’s trash cans
\ncontained recyclable materials like plastic bottles and paper napkins.
\nNow most of Busch Gardens’ “trash” actually goes to a recycling center
\nwhere every scrap of recyclable material is removed by hand. The
\nprogram eliminates more than 1,340 tons of trash from the landfill –
\nnearly the weight of Griffon’s steel track. Only 10 percent of the
\ntrash collected in the park end up in a landfill.”<\/i> <\/p>\n

In
\naddition, they have reduced the amount of pesticides that they use by
\nhaving a “beneficial bug” program in place since 1990. These changes
\nare also a part of the State of Virginia’s campaign, “Virginia Green<\/a>“, to promote environmentally friendly practices in all aspects of Virginia’s tourism industry.<\/p>\n

I
\nfind these changes to be very exciting and encouraging. The more I try
\nto reduce my own impact and use of earth’s natural resources, the more
\nI find that the remaining barriers to change are coming from larger
\nstructural issue that are in place external to me. This is one of
\nreasons I became attracted to IDP’s integral activism<\/a>
\nand making my voice heard on a larger scale. I hope that the kind of
\nimprovements that Busch Gardens has made will spread to others parks
\nand entertainment industries (such as movie theaters). Seeing that it
\ncan be done motivates me to get in touch with other amusement parks to
\nencourage them to also modify their practices. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kirsten & her very enthusiastic husband getting ready to ride another roller coaster My husband is what you would call a roller coaster enthusiast. By the end of this roller coaster riding season, he will have ridden 218 different roller coasters and visited 53 amusement parks since his obsession began at the age of nine…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":186,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interdependent-activism-politics","category-right-lifestyle"],"yoast_head":"\nGreening our amusement (parks) - One City<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/08\/greening-our-amusement-parks.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Greening our amusement (parks) - One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Kirsten & her very enthusiastic husband getting ready to ride another roller coaster My husband is what you would call a roller coaster enthusiast. 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