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Greening your Disney trip

A few days ago I was reading this post by Kevin Yee where he noticed a new feature that was added to Disney’s famed themed Garbage Can fleet:

I saw an unusual sight in Adventureland: near the eggroll cart (oops,
it only sells turkey legs now!) there is a new thing, a trashcan that
is fused together with a recycling can. On first glance, it looks like
two cans shoved together, but nope, it’s really a double-wide thing. I
approve of recycling cans being in the parks. I hope this takes off
more. Someday, every trashcan could have recycling right next to it.
Fine by me.

I didn’t think much of it other than noting to myself to take a picture of it next time I’m at the MK. But then I read this piece today by Tania Schmidt, a columnist for the Winona Daily News.

Tania just returned from a trip to Walt Disney World where she encountered one of Walt Disney World’s ironies. With a theme park like Epcot espousing responsible environmentalism at attractions like Living With The Land and Circle of Life on the one hand and rampant consumerism and production at attractions like Innoventions and Universe of Energy and it’s many many stores on the other hand, what message is one supposed to take home?

while Disney was telling me to go home and make a difference, what was
it telling me to do at its parks? It seems the messages were
conflicted. I did not see an overabundance of recycling bins at Disney
World or other theme parks. I did not see Disney selling one plastic
water bottle and endorsing refills at the fountains. Instead, I saw
$2.50 water bottles coming out of the ice containers at a rate of speed
faster than some of the rides themselves. Can you imagine the amount of
garbage and “overindulgence” generated by that Floridian attraction?

In the past I’ve pointed out areas where Disney is in the forefront of the green movement when it comes to major resorts and theme parks, the growing number of hotels certified green by the state of Florida is one, but clearly there is still a long way to go in some areas.

1 thought on “Greening your Disney trip”

  1. The reason most of the recycling cans were taken out of the parks in the past is because guests still throw regular trash in there, and guest show still had to do what they do anyway, sort out the recyclables. Logistically and man hour wise it’s just easier to throw it all together on the tumbler at that point instead of wasting time cleaning up the recycling bags.

    You will still see them in certain places where the trash mix up tends to be minimized, or where there isn’t sort equipment like Downtown Disney.

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