In 2010, we told you about Colorado National Monument’s ban on the sale of disposable water bottles. What we didn’t tell you is that the ban nearly fell apart in the eleventh hour. Dasani Water made a big push to stop the ban—and almost succeeded—just days before it was to go into effect.

At the same time, National Park Service abandoned its plan to end disposable water product sales in 75 percent of all visitor facilities by 2016.

“Ending sales of plastic bottles in national parks has gotten off to a slow start due to the influence of Coca-Cola, whose Dasani bottled water is one of the top sellers, on top National Park Service officials,” Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) claims.

Eventually, under public scrutiny, the Park Service director relented and the ban went into effect. However, NPS started requiring parks to study the impacts of a ban first. Requirements of the study include a review of the amount of waste that could be eliminated from the park; the costs of installing and maintaining water filling stations for visitors; the resulting impact on concessionaire and cooperative association revenues, and consultation with the Park Service’s Public Health Office. The mandate also covers contractual implications to concessionaires.

Beyond the 23 parks that have instituted a ban on the sale of plastic water bottles, California’s Golden Gate National Recreational Area and Florida’s Biscayne Bay National Park plan to install water fill stations, and Washington’s Mount Rainier National Park is considering a ban.

According to PEER, disposable plastic water bottles represent the biggest source of trash that parks must pay to haul away—averaging nearly one-third of all solid waste in parks.

The slow roll out of bans on plastic bottled water sales is encouraging, and shows us that despite corporate influence, the trend is leaning more and more towards keeping our national parks beautiful and trash free.

(Grand Canyon Fill Station photo, above, credit to: Think Outside The Bottle)