Challenging Terrain, Rewarding Vistas: The Ascent to Reuse at Grand Canyon National Park
As the saying goes, "Where there's a will, there's a way."
Upstream and our concessionaire partners Delaware North and Xanterra, plus the National Park Service, are chock full of will as we navigate and collaborate on the largest reuse system ever launched in a U.S. national park.
Each year at Grand Canyon National Park, more than five million single-use food containers are used for only minutes before being thrown away. As one of the most iconic and heavily visited national parks in the world, the Grand Canyon is uniquely positioned to lead the National Park System by showing that food service can prioritize stewardship over an outdated, disposable status quo.
From the outset, partners recognized the value of moving beyond single-use packaging and giving visitors the option to purchase food and beverages without creating trash.
The shared vision — reducing waste at scale, improving the visitor experience, and building a reuse system that could serve as a model for other protected places — resonated across organizations.
Our mutual commitment, backed by seed funding from the National Park Foundation, has carried the project forward through challenges and learning opportunities. What follows are updates and insights from the design and implementation of a reusable foodware system for Grand Canyon Village — the dining hub of the park.
Meet the Team
After designing the reuse system in the spring of 2025, we started pulling together the team of experts who could bring this system to life. We issued RFIs for a dishwashing facility, container tracking, and of course — the reusable foodware itself. Given the unique complexities of this project, we had to juggle equally unique considerations during our decision making. We needed providers comfortable working within the constraints of a remote, isolated setting, at a large scale, and with multi-national corporate partners. We’re confident that we built the right team for the job.
Vytal, a reuse service provider operating in 23 countries, was contracted to design the wash facility that will be needed to clean, sanitize, and dry containers circulating through the 16 dining sites across Grand Canyon Village. Reuse operational expert, Stephen Davis, and construction firm Falcon will be building and installing the wash facility.
Avery Dennison, the world’s largest manufacturer of RFID tags and labels, is responsible for integrating tracking technology into the reuse system. They bring a full end-to-end approach: hardware (tags, antennas, readers), software (cloud dashboards, APIs), and implementation support (consulting, project management, and training). Their positioning is not only as a technology vendor, but as a strategic partner willing to subsidize startup costs and leverage their global supply chain relationships.
DeSter will provide the reusable foodware, sourced from their production facility in Ohio. They offer the specific suite of products needed for this project and tout extensive experience in high-volume reuse via their work with McDonalds. While Upstream vetted the container options to ensure they met the necessary specifications to work in the reuse system, it was important that the concessioners held ultimate decision authority when choosing this provider. The concessioners were impressed by the look and feel of the DeSter containers, and are confident in using them as packaging to sell their goods to visitors.
Since building the dishwashing facility will take the longest, we began work with Vytal first, and have since brought on Avery Dennison and DeSter as we build toward launch of the final system. This super-powered team is critical to bringing the essential components of the system together alongside key stakeholders at Xanterra, Delaware North, and the NPS.
So, How’s It All Going?
No one has ever built a reuse system inside of a national park before — not to mention a remote, arid park that sees millions of visitors per year. But that scale was part of the strategy. We knew there would be challenges, and we were prepared to flex our change management chops to take them on — while also learning as we go. And learning we are!
Maintaining a Spirit of Conservation
To preserve the conservation values and historical status of the park, the National Park Service has strict construction and siting guidelines. Originally, we asked Vytal to design a mobile wash unit to create less friction in the compliance process. But a facility that must process thousands of reusables per day has a certain heft to it, and ultimately a truly mobile facility just wouldn’t cut it.
Though it is still technically removeable, the wash facility is now a modular building, and therefore NPS requires construction-level review. While this delays our timeline and shifts our initial vision, the NPS has displayed a strong commitment to the project, rallying multiple departments to work out a solution that meets code while allowing the project to advance in a timely fashion.
Mobile or not, finding just the right location for the wash facility is also a complex consideration. It needs to be located away from areas of high visitor traffic, but also be central enough to serve as an efficient dishwashing hub, with access to infrastructure like wi-fi, electricity, and a water line.
Similarly, the return stations where visitors drop their reusable containers must comply with the standards of the park. Visitors have traveled far to enjoy the views, not to be distracted by bright or flashy signage. And yet, they also need to know what to do with their containers in order for the system to work. As such, we are designing clear messaging in compliant fonts and colors that will go on bear-proof return stations located ubiquitously next to trash and recycling receptacles around the park.
From visitor experience, to historic preservation, to draws on resources — and beyond — the NPS thinks about conservation holistically. As we build a reuse system at Grand Canyon National Park, we’re internalizing the importance of this lens for the buildout of a new system anywhere.
What About That Messaging?
We need to fit the reuse system seamlessly into the visitor experience while also guiding visitors from all nationalities to properly return their containers: a challenge that the researchers at Penn State were on board to help us overcome. Last fall, we worked with Penn State to conduct a consumer research study among Grand Canyon South Rim visitors to help design the clearest educational messaging. Participants selected messaging they thought would most effectively prompt them to return their containers.
We are working alongside the team at Leave No Trace — who has extensive experience in messaging to national park visitors — to determine the right messages to include on the reusable foodware and on the return stations. Our next phase will determine the nature and messaging for signage around Grand Canyon Village.
“Yes, this is hard. Let’s do it anyway.”
As we dug deeper into logistics and implementation over the year, the reality of this project started to set in for everyone. It was no longer an idea in a grant proposal or a schematic in a design sprint: we were making decisions that would significantly affect dining and park operations. This sparked a mix of excitement and curiosity, as well as trepidation and hesitation, in our stakeholder partners.
Our partners could have cited any number of reasons to back out. Not least, procurement of single-use foodware at volume is so artificially cheap and waste hauling is so subsidized, there is simply no financial incentive for vendors to move away from it.
Try as we might, we could not make the “math math” for low-value, high-volume items like utensils and condiment cups. It is also more difficult to process these smaller items through the reuse system without loss and damage, particularly in the wash facility — which means losing more durable goods to the waste system and a steeper bill for the concessioners. Until operational and market realities change, these smaller items will remain single-use. Even still, the reuse system at the Grand Canyon will displace 2.1 million single-use items from the park annually.
Throughout these challenges, our partners continually displayed the will to find a solution. Being first isn’t just about being fast, it also means paving the bumps in the road. Without an established model to follow, our partners put their trust in our guidance and expertise, and they consistently came around to “yes” after some natural and understandable resistance.
With this project, we are actively establishing the model to follow. Since reuse is new to most stakeholders, a clearly charted map will help them better understand what they are getting into from the outset.
So, What’s Next?
The project continues! We have multiple steps to go until visitors see reusables circulating at Grand Canyon Village, but we are well on our way. The NPS is currently reviewing the design and aesthetics of the dozens of return bins we will be ordering, as well as the plans for the wash facility, which will then need to be built.
Simultaneously, we are finalizing the messaging and signage that will pull the full reuse cycle together clearly for guests and staff alike. And of course, we must order thousands of reusable containers with RFID tracking embedded in each piece.
Knowing we will encounter more hiccups along the way as we build this system all-in from the ground up, we envision Grand Canyon visitors enjoying their food and beverages out of safe, durable, easily returnable containers while overlooking the beautiful vistas by January of 2027. We will continue to keep you updated on this exciting and unprecedented journey to scaled reuse!
