"The Green Parks Plan www.nps.gov/greenparksplan is comprehensive. It makes us look at how we can conserve energy and increase our reliance on renewable energy, improve water use efficiency, limit the waste we generate, mitigate the effects of climate change, change what we buy and how we manage facilities." "?uNational Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis

The National Park Service's "Our Green Park Plan," released in 2012, focuses on sustainable management of national parks, including reducing energy and water consumption, adopting greener transportation and lowering emissions of greenhouse gases.

Since 2008, the National Park Service (NPS) has decreased emissions from on-site fossil fuel combustion and electricity consumption from the grid by 13 percent. NPS says it is on track to reduce fossil fuel combustion and electricity usage by 35 percent by 2020.

National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis says the plan is important because ""?(R)? it makes us think about how to integrate sustainable practices into every aspect of our operations. And over the past year we've done just that."

Initiating sustainable practices within NPS is important because NPS manages the largest number of constructed assets of any civilian agency in the federal government. It operates and maintains 397 national parks, including 67,000 structures, 50 million square feet of constructed space (e.g., visitor centers, historic structures), more than 4 million acres of maintained landscapes (from campgrounds to historic battlefields), 17,000 miles of trails, and more than 3,000 utility systems.

NPS reports:
-Decreased greenhouse gas emissions from indirect emission sources such as commuter travel and off-site wastewater treatment by seven percent. NPS is on track toward the goal of reducing these emissions by 10 percent by 2020.

-Diverted 92 percent of construction and demolition waste. This exceeds the goal of diverting 50 percent of annual solid waste from landfills through recycling and other practices.

Green practices at specific parks include:
-Denali National Park has partnered with a recycling company in Fairbanks to recycle glass into glass tiles, and to liquefy plastics for energy recovery.

-Zion National Park, through partnerships, provides free Zion Spring Water at high visitor use areas throughout the park, and encourages visitors to use reusable water bottles, an effort that has elimination more than 5,000 pounds of plastic water bottles being sold in the park and subsequently thrown out or recycled. There has been a 78 percent increase in reusable water bottles sold in the park.