OK, you're Joe Suburbanite. You want to buy four one-liter bottles for you, your wife and your kids. Normally would cost you six to eight bucks or so.
Instead, you are looking at 32 bucks for four Nalgene bottles at eight bucks each. You say screw that, you ain't paying that much for water, let's hit the trail without it. And one of the kids ends up dehydrated, collapses, and the rangers have to haul him out.
There are better solutions. Put a fifty-cent stamped deposit on bottles sold in the park, and people will pack out such bottles for the deposit refund if they find them by the trail.
I smell left-wing activism against bottled water here. There are better solutions to address the stated problems.
I'm not seeing conspiracy here, just frustration at the amount of trash left around and the desire to do _something_ obvious & easy to at least reduce the problem a bit. "Stop selling disposable plastic bottles" is the first easy obvious step.
So be a capitalist and offer the NPS your solution: you'll operate the $0.50 refund plan, and give them a fair cut of the profits.
“Put a fifty-cent stamped deposit on bottles sold in the park,...”
Then you’d find enterprising “business people” making fake stamped bottles and carrying em in for return!