Picking up trash, taking in scenery: What Yosemite Facelift collected

New data provides the clearest picture to date of the thousands of pounds of litter left in Yosemite National Park each year — valuable information advocates hope can help persuade federal lawmakers to ban the sale of single-use plastics across the entire national park system.

Plastic Gatorade bottles, Camel and Marlboro cigarette butts, Nature Valley granola bar wrappers, bandages, and disposable paper coffee cups were among commonly found garbage items picked from the ground in Yosemite this past summer, according to the 5 Gyres Institute, a Los Angeles nonprofit focused on reducing plastic use worldwide.

Last year, the group encouraged travelers to submit accounts of litter they found while visiting the country’s national parks. That campaign drew 558 entries in 16 parks — not a huge sample size for understanding

the full scope of pollution and litter across the country’s 423 national park sites.

But at Yosemite, it had an ace in the hole: the annual Facelift trash cleanup event, put on by the Yosemite Climbing Association, which draws thousands of volunteers to Yosemite for a

five-day event each fall. From a random sampling of the 14,780 pounds of trash picked up by more than 1,300 volunteers at this year’s gathering, plus 88 litter entries submitted during the summer months, 5 Gyres was able to paint a more representa

Tracy Barbutes/Special to The Chronicle Volunteers hike up the Yosemite Falls trail during the Yosemite Facelift cleanup event in September.