Disney is making a major push to eliminate and scale back environmental waste at their theme parks. Today, they announced that Disney theme parks will eliminate single-use plastic straws and stirrers by mid-2019. In addition, they will also move towards more refillable amenities within guest rooms, they’ll move away from plastic bags at their stores and they will eliminate the use of polystyrene cups.
The full announcement, as seen on the Disney Parks Blog, states that these changes should eliminate more than 175 million straws and 13 million stirrers annually.
This is great news. The amount of waste generated at Disney theme parks is astronomical. Cutting down on a few plastic items is at least a great start to help remove some single-use plastics from the environment.
How will these changes impact guests?
Some of these changes are already in place around Disney World property. Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park doesn’t carry any plastic straws (they use biodegradable paper straws) for animal safety. Select Disney World resorts are already using refillable shampoo dispensers to cut down on the waste of the smaller travel-size bottles. Some guests may balk at a few of the changes, but that negative feedback is worth the positive impact on the environment.
