To-go pizza in a bag is among several sustainability tactics that have been put into action across the park over the past year, part of an effort to significantly reduce the use of single-use plastics at one of America’s most famous and beloved national parks.

Yosemite eliminated the sale of beverages packaged in single-use plastics across its retail and dining sites at the start of 2023.

Glass and aluminum bottles have replaced single-use plastic bottles, park officials said. Some beverages like Snapple and kombucha were already in glass bottles, while others, like water, are now only available in reusable aluminum containers.

“We wanted it to be a solution that has that twist top,” Yosemite Hospitality spokesperson Chelsie Layman said. “We know a lot of our visitors and guests are grabbing water. We didn’t want [Yosemite hikers to buy a] can of water that you can’t reuse and take on the trail.”

Other changes visitors may notice are recyclable Nespresso pods at the Ahwahnee hotel, compostable packaging for grab-and-go sandwiches, salads, snacks and s’mores kits, and refillable propane canisters instead of single-use propane canisters.

With cardboard pizza boxes gone, those seeking takeout pizza at Curry Village will instead get “lower waste, compostable paper bags.” The bags are designed not to bleed through with pizza grease, Layman said.

“In the past, they would give you your pizza in the box and you take it to your table and sit down,” she told SFGATE. “Now, you get your pizza and it’s only on the tray. If you ask for a bag for leftovers to go, it’s in a pizza bag. The trash cans could really only hold a small amount of pizza boxes until they were completely full.”

The move eliminates 100,000 pizza boxes from Yosemite’s waste on an annual basis.

In the coming year, Layman said Yosemite housekeeping will begin to transition away from the use of plastic bags to transport linens to a more environmentally friendly option. The park’s warehouse crews have already replaced disposable plastic wrap with “heavy-duty, reusable pallet wraps.”

Yosemite isn’t the first U.S. national park to go plastic-free. That distinction belongs to Zion National Park in Utah, which eliminated single-use plastics “in or around 2015,” according to a National Park Service spokesperson. The federal government has set a timeline to ban single-use plastics sales on public lands and national parks by 2032.