Keep America Beautiful is a campaign that started after World War II by beverage companies, in particular, and the packaging industry that stood to gain from the effort. The companies had shifted from reusable to single use containers. With reusable containers, the companies bore the responsibility and the cost of recycling. With single use containers, that responsibility and cost was passed onto the public. If you can remember, think back to the days when milk was sold in glass bottles. The milk companies collected those containers, cleaned, and prepared them for the next batch of milk.
Looking over some old photographs with my 90 year old aunt, there is a picture of her beautifully dressed and posed against a background strewn with trash. I couldn’t believe it, but
it wasn’t an unusual condition of city streets in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Further, single use packaging had begun to contribute to a trash problem.
To avert public backlash, the corporate led Keep America Beautiful Campaign used the newly coined term “litterbugs” and blamed the problem on them (insert crying indian link). Today, single use packaging is the norm and “litterbugs” continue to litter. The ocean contains a garbage patch twice the size of Texas, our drinking water is polluted, and our roadsides are littered to the demise of our planet and animals we share this Earth with. Are beverage companies off the hook? Similar to the US anti-smoking campaign, why aren’t we effectively mobilized as a nation to properly recycle and end littering? What would it take?
0
