Keep America Beautiful

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Keep America Beautiful
Formation1953
Stamford, Connecticut
TypePrivate non-profit
Legal statusActive
PurposeTo end littering, to improve recycling, and to beautify American communities.
Headquarters1010 Washington Blvd, Stamford, CT 06901
Region served
United States of America
President and CEO
Jennifer Lawson
Website kab.org
Keep America Beautiful cleanup volunteers in 2021 Keep America Beautiful Cleanup Team.jpg
Keep America Beautiful cleanup volunteers in 2021

Keep America Beautiful is a nonprofit organization founded in 1953. It is the largest community improvement organization in the United States, with more than 700 state and community-based affiliate organizations and more than 1,000 partner organizations. [1]

Contents

Keep America Beautiful aims to end littering, to improve recycling, and to beautify American communities. [2] The organization's narrow focus on littering and recycling has been criticized as greenwashing in that it diverts responsibility away from corporations and industries. [3] [4] [5] [6]

History

Keep America Beautiful was founded in December 1953 by the American Can Company and the Owens-Illinois Glass Company. [7] [6]

Keep America Beautiful conducted many local PSA campaigns early in its history. One of these early campaigns in Pennsylvania (PennDOT) some attribute to having coined the term "litterbug," although the National Council of State Garden Clubs representative exhibited a "litter bug" emblem at the first Keep America Beautiful organizational meeting. Author and Federated Garden Clubs of Maryland president Alice Rush McKeon published "The Litterbug Family" in 1931 containing poems and illustrations about the problem of roadside litter. [8] [9] [10]

Others report, however, that the term was coined by Paul B. Gioni, a copywriter in New York City who originated it for the Ad Council in 1947.[ citation needed ] Keep America Beautiful joined with the Ad Council in 1961 to popularize the idea that individuals must help protect against the effects litter has on the environment. [11] Gioni came up with the 1963 television campaign theme "Every Litter Bit Hurts." [12] Another campaign in 1964 featured the character Susan Spotless. [13]

In 1970, Keep America Beautiful began distributing free brochures. More than 100,000 copies of the brochure were requested within four months. [14]

In 1971, on Earth Day, a new campaign was launched with the theme "People Start Pollution. People Can Stop It." In what later became known as the "Crying Indian" PSA, [15] the television ad, narrated by actor William Conrad with Peter Sarstedt's instrumental "Overture" playing in the background, featured Italian-American actor Iron Eyes Cody, [16] who portrayed a Native American man devastated to see the destruction of Earth's natural beauty caused by the thoughtless pollution and litter of a modern society. [17] [18]

In 1976, Keep America Beautiful introduced its "Clean Community System", which encouraged local communities to prevent litter through education efforts, public service advertising, local research, the mapping of litter "hotspots", and cleanup activities. During the height of the campaign, it received over 2,000 letters a month from people wanting to join their local programs. [11]

In 2023, Keep America Beautiful began its "Do Beautiful Things" podcast series hosted by Jenny Lawson, the organization's president and CEO. It covers policies, behaviors, and business solutions that can help create more sustainable communities. By featuring expert interviews and discussions it aims to educate and provide practical sustainability tips. [19]

Accomplishments

Keep America Beautiful is best known for its "Crying Indian" public service advertisement (PSA) which launched on Earth Day in 1971 and for its annual America Recycles Day. The advertising campaign has been widely credited, including in Frank Lowenstein's "Voices of Protest", with inspiring America's fledgling environmental movement.[ dubious discuss ]

In 2021, Keep America Beautiful released a comprehensive litter study. Its study concluded that 90% of Americans agree litter is a problem in their community, roadside litter is down 54% in the last ten years and there are approximately 50 billion pieces of litter on the ground in the United States. In concert with the study's release, Keep America Beautiful launched their hashtag #152AndYou on Earth Day representing that if all individuals picked up 152 pieces of litter, there would be no litter on the ground until someone littered again. [20]

Programs

Partnership with other organizations

Keep America Beautiful distributes programming and materials through a network of organizations. In addition to KAB's certified affiliates, the organization partners with other groups to expand its reach. These include multiple state recycling organizations, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Hands on Network and the Points of Light Institute, the Arbor Day Foundation, Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, National CleanUp Day, Ocean Conservancy, Sustainable Urban Forests Coalition, EARTHDAY.ORG, and Take Pride in America, among others. [21] [22]

Scouting Keep America Beautiful Day was first cosponsored by Keep America Beautiful and the Boy Scouts of America in 1971 as a national cleanup and recycling program. Keep America Beautiful also co-sponsors the "Keep America Beautiful Hometown USA Award" with the Boy Scouts of America that boy scouts can earn by completing a non-paid, community service project, with the approved scout project being designed to "help keep America beautiful and benefit the community either physically or financially." [23] [24]

In January, 2021, Keep America Beautiful merged with RETREET, which focuses on post-disaster tree planting. [25]

Controversies

Keep America Beautiful's, now retired, 1971 ad campaign, featuring Italian-American actor Iron Eyes Cody as the "Crying Indian", has often been described as greenwashing. People Start Pollution - 1971 Ad.jpg
Keep America Beautiful's, now retired, 1971 ad campaign, featuring Italian-American actor Iron Eyes Cody as the "Crying Indian", has often been described as greenwashing.

Keep America Beautiful's actions have been criticized as greenwashing. The organization's narrow focus on littering and recycling diverts responsibility away from corporations and industries. [26]

Despite self-identifying as having Native American ancestry with the stage name of Iron Eyes Cody, Espera Oscar DeCorti was of Italian descent. [16] This sparked accusations of cultural appropriation and racial stereotyping. [27] In February 2023, the Keep America Beautiful organization transferred ownership of the ad's copyright to the National Congress of American Indians, who intend to restrict use of the ad to only historical purposes. [28]

Heather Rogers, creator of the 2005 documentary film Gone Tomorrow. The Hidden Life of Garbage and book of the same name, [29] classifies Keep America Beautiful as one of the first greenwashing corporate fronts. She asserts that the group was created in response to Vermont's 1953 attempt to legislate a mandatory deposit to be paid at point of purchase on disposable beverage containers and banning the sale of beer in non-refillable bottles. [30] [31]

Keep America Beautiful's narrow focus on litter, and its characterization of litter as a consumer created problem, is seen as an attempt to divert an extended producer responsibility from the industries that manufacture and sell disposable products to consumers who improperly dispose of the non-returnable wrappers, filters, and beverage containers. [29]

Elizabeth Royte, author of Garbage Land, describes Keep America Beautiful as a "masterful example of corporate greenwash", writing that in contrast to its anti-litter campaigns, it ignores the potential of recycling legislation and resists changes to packaging. [32]

The tobacco industry developed programs with Keep America Beautiful that focused on cigarette litter solutions acceptable to the industry such as volunteer clean-ups and ashtrays, in lieu of smoking bans at parks and beaches. [33] The tobacco industry has funded Keep America Beautiful [33] and similar organizations internationally. [34]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Earth Day</span> Annual international event on April 22

Earth Day is an annual event on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First held on April 22, 1970, it now includes a wide range of events coordinated globally by EARTHDAY.ORG including 1 billion people in more than 193 countries.

A public service announcement (PSA) is a message in the public interest disseminated by the media without charge to raise public awareness and change behavior. Oftentimes these messages feature unsettling imagery, ideas or behaviors that are designed to startle or even scare the viewer into understanding the consequences of undergoing a particular harmful action or inaction as well as the importance of avoiding such choices. In the UK, they are generally called a public information film (PIF); in Hong Kong, they are known as an announcement in the public interest (API).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Greenwashing</span> Use of the aesthetic of conservationism for promotion

Greenwashing, also called green sheen, is a form of advertising or marketing spin that deceptively uses green PR and green marketing to persuade the public that an organization's products, goals, or policies are environmentally friendly. Companies that intentionally adopt greenwashing communication strategies often do so to distance themselves from their environmental lapses or those of their suppliers. Firms engage in greenwashing for two primary reasons: to appear legitimate and to project an image of environmental responsibility to the public. Because there "is no harmonised definition of greenwashing", a determination that this is occurring in a given instance may be subjective.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Iron Eyes Cody</span> American actor (1904–1999)

Iron Eyes Cody was an American actor of Italian descent who portrayed Native Americans in Hollywood films, including the role of Chief Iron Eyes in Bob Hope's The Paleface (1948). He also played a Native American shedding a tear about pollution in one of the country's most well-known television public service announcements from the group Keep America Beautiful. Living in Hollywood, he began to insist, even in his private life, that he was Native American, over time claiming membership in several different tribes. In 1996, Cody's half-sister said that he was of Italian ancestry, but he denied it. After his death, it was revealed that he was of Sicilian parentage and not Native American at all.

Product stewardship is an approach to managing the environmental impacts of different products and materials and at different stages in their production, use and disposal. It acknowledges that those involved in producing, selling, using and disposing of products have a shared responsibility to ensure that those products or materials are managed in a way that reduces their impact, throughout their lifecycle, on the environment and on human health and safety. This approach focusses on the product itself, and everyone involved in the lifespan of the product is called upon to take up responsibility to reduce its environmental, health, and safety impacts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Litter</span> Waste products disposed of incorrectly at an inappropriate location

Litter consists of waste products that have been discarded incorrectly, without consent, at an unsuitable location. The word litter can also be used as a verb: to litter means to drop and leave objects, often man-made, such as aluminum cans, paper cups, food wrappers, cardboard boxes or plastic bottles on the ground, and leave them there indefinitely or for other people to dispose of as opposed to disposing of them correctly.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Environmentally friendly</span> Sustainability and marketing term

Environment friendly processes, or environmental-friendly processes, are sustainability and marketing terms referring to goods and services, laws, guidelines and policies that claim reduced, minimal, or no harm upon ecosystems or the environment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ad Council</span> American nonprofit organization

The Advertising Council, commonly known as Ad Council, is an American nonprofit organization that produces, distributes, and promotes public service announcements or PSAs on behalf of various sponsors, including nonprofit organizations, non-governmental organizations and agencies of the United States government.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clean Up Australia</span> Australian environmental organisation

Clean Up Australia Limited is a not-for-profit Australian environmental conservation organisation. It is registered with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Environment Agency</span> Government agency of Singapore

National Environment Agency (NEA) is a statutory board under the Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment of the Government of Singapore.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Litter in the United States</span> Crime and environmental issue

Litter in the United States is an environmental issue and littering is often a criminal offense, punishable with a fine as set out by statutes in many places. Litter laws, enforcement efforts, and court prosecutions are used to help curtail littering. All three are part of a "comprehensive response to environmental violators", write Epstein and Hammett, researchers for the United States Department of Justice. Littering and dumping laws, found in all fifty United States, appear to take precedence over municipal ordinances in controlling violations and act as public safety, not aesthetic measures. Similar from state-to-state, these laws define who violators are, the type or "function" of the person committing the action, and what items must be littered or dumped to constitute an illegal act. Municipal ordinances and state statutes require a "human action" in committing illegal littering or dumping, for one to be "held in violation." Most states require law enforcement officers or designated, authorized individuals, to "...witness the illegal act to write a citation." Together, prosecutions and punitive fines are important in fighting illegal littering and dumping.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Litter in New Zealand</span>

Litter is a global issue and has a significant human impact on the environment. Litter is especially hazardous because it can enter ecosystems and harm a country's biodiversity. Litter is a prevalent environmental issue in New Zealand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Environmental movement in Australia</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Waste in New Zealand</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electronic waste by country</span>

Electronic waste is a significant part of today's global, post-consumer waste stream. Efforts are being made to recycle and reduce this waste.

EcoMB, originally named the Environmental Coalition of Miami and the Beaches, is a nonprofit environmental organization headquartered in Miami Beach, Florida. EcoMB was established in 1994 and is a registered 501(c)(3) organization. EcoMB's mission is to educate and promote environmental sustainability and ecological preservation in Florida and Miami-Dade County in particular. The organization lists four primary objectives - reduce litter on beaches, parks, mangroves, waterways and surrounding islands; increase rates of recycling; promote, preserve and restore local coastal habitats; and decrease the greater community's carbon footprint.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Plastic pollution</span> Accumulation of plastic in natural ecosystems

Plastic pollution is the accumulation of plastic objects and particles in the Earth's environment that adversely affects humans, wildlife and their habitat. Plastics that act as pollutants are categorized by size into micro-, meso-, or macro debris. Plastics are inexpensive and durable, making them very adaptable for different uses; as a result, manufacturers choose to use plastic over other materials. However, the chemical structure of most plastics renders them resistant to many natural processes of degradation and as a result they are slow to degrade. Together, these two factors allow large volumes of plastic to enter the environment as mismanaged waste which persists in the ecosystem and travels throughout food webs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Our Seas Our Future</span> New Zealand non-profit organization

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">National CleanUp Day</span> Day observed annually September in the US

National CleanUp Day is an annual event in the USA, encouraging organized cleanup efforts, held on the third Saturday of September. The event is held in conjunction with World Cleanup Day. The US event, organized by non-profit organization Clean Trails, promotes individual and community volunteer activities to keep outdoor spaces clean and prevent plastic waste from entering the ocean.

References

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