Keep America Beautiful
Based on Wikipedia: Keep America Beautiful
The Greatest Environmental Misdirection in American History
In 1971, millions of Americans watched a Native American man paddle his canoe through polluted waters, walk past piles of roadside garbage, and shed a single tear as someone tossed trash from a car window. The advertisement became one of the most famous public service announcements ever made. It won awards. It changed how Americans thought about littering.
It was also, in many ways, a lie.
The man in the commercial wasn't Native American at all. He was Espera Oscar DeCorti, an Italian-American actor who had adopted the stage name Iron Eyes Cody and spent decades claiming Indigenous ancestry he didn't have. But that deception, as problematic as it was, pales in comparison to the larger sleight of hand the advertisement performed.
The commercial was created by Keep America Beautiful, an organization that presents itself as an environmental nonprofit dedicated to ending litter and improving recycling. What it actually is, according to critics, is one of the most successful corporate greenwashing operations in history—a sophisticated campaign to convince you that pollution is your fault, not the fault of the companies that manufacture disposable products by the billions.
Follow the Money to the Beginning
Keep America Beautiful wasn't founded by environmentalists or concerned citizens. It was founded in December 1953 by the American Can Company and the Owens-Illinois Glass Company—that is, by companies that manufacture the cans and bottles that end up as litter.
Why would beverage container manufacturers create an anti-litter organization? The timing provides a clue.
In 1953, Vermont was attempting to pass legislation that would have required a mandatory deposit on disposable beverage containers and banned the sale of beer in non-refillable bottles. This was a direct threat to the business model of companies selling disposable packaging. If consumers had to return bottles to get their deposit back, they'd be far more likely to buy beverages in reusable containers instead.
The beverage and packaging industries faced a choice. They could redesign their products to be less wasteful, accept deposit legislation that would encourage reuse, or find another way.
They chose another way. Instead of taking responsibility for the waste their products generated, they would convince America that littering was a problem of individual behavior—of thoughtless consumers making bad choices—rather than a systemic problem created by an industry that had deliberately shifted from reusable to disposable containers because it was more profitable.
The Invention of the Litterbug
One of Keep America Beautiful's early accomplishments was popularizing the concept of the "litterbug"—a person who carelessly discards trash in public spaces. The term had existed before; author Alice Rush McKeon published "The Litterbug Family" in 1931, a collection of poems and illustrations about roadside litter. But Keep America Beautiful transformed the litterbug from a minor nuisance into a full-fledged villain, the person responsible for environmental degradation.
This framing was genius from a corporate perspective.
If the problem is litterbugs, the solution is education and personal responsibility. If the problem is that companies produce billions of disposable containers with no plan for what happens after they're used, the solution might be regulation, deposits, or bans on certain types of packaging.
Keep America Beautiful chose to focus exclusively on the first framing.
In 1961, the organization partnered with the Ad Council to spread its message that individuals must help protect the environment from litter. The 1963 campaign proclaimed "Every Litter Bit Hurts." A 1964 campaign featured a character called Susan Spotless. The 1971 Earth Day campaign declared "People Start Pollution. People Can Stop It."
Notice what all these messages have in common: they place responsibility entirely on individual consumers.
The Crying Indian and Its Legacy
The "Crying Indian" advertisement became the organization's most famous creation. Narrated by actor William Conrad with Peter Sarstedt's instrumental "Overture" playing in the background, it showed Iron Eyes Cody—presented as a Native American man—surveying environmental destruction and shedding a single, eloquent tear at the sight of a modern society's thoughtless pollution.
The commercial was devastatingly effective. It won Clio Awards. It was named one of the top 100 advertising campaigns of the twentieth century. It genuinely did encourage many Americans to think twice before tossing trash out their car windows.
But it also accomplished something else: it cemented in the American consciousness the idea that pollution is caused by careless individuals, not by industrial systems that produce disposable waste at massive scale.
The revelation that Iron Eyes Cody was actually Italian-American eventually sparked accusations of cultural appropriation and racial stereotyping. In February 2023, Keep America Beautiful transferred ownership of the advertisement's copyright to the National Congress of American Indians, who plan to restrict its use to historical purposes only. The advertisement had become an embarrassment.
But the damage—or depending on your perspective, the accomplishment—was already done. Multiple generations of Americans had internalized the message that they, as individuals, were responsible for litter and pollution.
What Keep America Beautiful Doesn't Do
To understand why critics call Keep America Beautiful a greenwashing operation, you need to look not just at what the organization does, but at what it conspicuously avoids doing.
The organization has never supported container deposit legislation—laws that require a small deposit to be paid when purchasing beverages in disposable containers, refunded when the container is returned for recycling. These deposit systems are remarkably effective. States with bottle bills have recycling rates for beverage containers that are roughly double those of states without such laws. They also dramatically reduce litter, since containers with a cash value attached are far more likely to be collected.
But deposit legislation is exactly what the beverage and packaging industries were trying to avoid when they created Keep America Beautiful in the first place.
Elizabeth Royte, author of the book Garbage Land, describes Keep America Beautiful as "a masterful example of corporate greenwash." She points out that while the organization runs anti-litter campaigns, it actively resists changes to packaging that might reduce waste at the source. The organization promotes recycling—but recycling that depends on individual consumers making the right choices, not regulations that would force manufacturers to take responsibility for the waste their products generate.
This approach is sometimes called emphasizing "downstream" solutions rather than "upstream" ones. Downstream solutions deal with waste after it's created: cleanup campaigns, recycling programs, public education about proper disposal. Upstream solutions prevent waste from being created in the first place: deposit legislation, bans on certain types of packaging, requirements that manufacturers use recyclable materials or take back their products at end of life.
Keep America Beautiful focuses almost exclusively on downstream solutions.
The Tobacco Connection
The organization's relationship with the tobacco industry reveals its approach particularly clearly.
Cigarette butts are the single most common type of litter in the world. The filters are made of cellulose acetate, a form of plastic that can take over a decade to break down. Trillions of cigarette butts are discarded globally each year, leaching toxic chemicals into soil and water.
There are upstream solutions to cigarette butt litter. Some jurisdictions have banned smoking in parks and on beaches. Others have proposed requiring tobacco companies to fund cleanup efforts or to redesign filters to be biodegradable.
But the tobacco industry didn't want those solutions. Instead, tobacco companies funded Keep America Beautiful and similar organizations to promote different approaches: volunteer cleanups, public ashtrays, and educational campaigns encouraging smokers to dispose of their butts properly.
These approaches treat cigarette litter as a problem of individual smoker behavior, not as a problem created by an industry that manufactures a product designed to be discarded after single use with no plan for managing the waste.
The tobacco industry has funded Keep America Beautiful and similar organizations internationally.
The Documentary Record
In 2005, journalist and filmmaker Heather Rogers released a documentary called Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage, along with a book of the same name. She classified Keep America Beautiful as one of the first greenwashing corporate fronts in American history.
Rogers traced how the organization was created specifically to counter Vermont's 1953 deposit legislation and how its focus on individual responsibility has served to protect corporate interests ever since. The organization's consistent message—that litter and recycling are matters of personal choice and community action—conveniently diverts attention from questions about why we produce so much disposable packaging in the first place and whether manufacturers should bear responsibility for the waste their products generate.
This pattern—creating nonprofit organizations that appear to address environmental problems while actually protecting corporate interests—has been replicated many times since. But Keep America Beautiful was there first, and its model has proven remarkably durable.
What the Organization Actually Does Today
To be fair, Keep America Beautiful does accomplish some genuinely useful things.
It's now the largest community improvement organization in the United States, with more than 700 state and community-based affiliate organizations and over 1,000 partner organizations. It partners with groups like Boys and Girls Clubs of America, the Arbor Day Foundation, Ocean Conservancy, and many others.
Since 1971, the organization has cosponsored a national cleanup and recycling program with the Boy Scouts of America. Scouts can earn the "Keep America Beautiful Hometown USA Award" by completing community service projects designed to benefit their communities.
In January 2021, Keep America Beautiful merged with RETREET, an organization focused on post-disaster tree planting.
The organization conducts research on litter. A 2021 study found that 90 percent of Americans agree litter is a problem in their community, that roadside litter had decreased by 54 percent over the previous decade, and that there are approximately 50 billion pieces of litter on the ground in the United States. In connection with the study, Keep America Beautiful launched a campaign called #152AndYou, pointing out that if every American picked up 152 pieces of litter, there would be none left on the ground—until someone littered again.
Notice how even this campaign frames the problem: the solution is for individuals to pick up litter, not for manufacturers to produce less of it.
The Numbers Are Staggering
Fifty billion pieces of litter on American soil. That number is worth sitting with for a moment.
The United States has a population of about 330 million people. That means there are roughly 150 pieces of litter on the ground for every man, woman, and child in the country. If you lined them up, 50 billion cigarette butts would stretch around the Earth more than a hundred times.
Keep America Beautiful's #152AndYou campaign suggests that if everyone just picked up their share, the problem would be solved. But this framing obscures a crucial question: why is there so much disposable waste being produced in the first place?
The United States produces more plastic waste per capita than any other country in the world. Much of this plastic is single-use packaging—bottles, wrappers, containers—designed to be used once and discarded. The companies that manufacture this packaging have successfully externalized the cost of disposal onto consumers and communities. They profit from selling the packaging, and everyone else deals with the waste.
Extended Producer Responsibility
There's a concept in environmental policy called "extended producer responsibility," often abbreviated as EPR. The idea is simple: manufacturers should be responsible for the entire lifecycle of their products, including what happens when those products become waste.
Under extended producer responsibility, a company that sells beverages in plastic bottles would be responsible for ensuring those bottles are collected and recycled. A company that sells products in non-recyclable packaging would face fees or requirements to switch to recyclable materials. The cost of managing waste would be built into the price of the product, creating incentives to design products that generate less waste.
Many countries have implemented extended producer responsibility programs for packaging. Germany's "Green Dot" system, launched in 1991, requires manufacturers to pay fees based on the amount and type of packaging they produce. These fees fund collection and recycling systems. The system has dramatically increased recycling rates and created strong incentives for companies to reduce packaging.
Keep America Beautiful's approach is essentially the opposite of extended producer responsibility. By framing litter and recycling as matters of individual consumer behavior, the organization diverts attention from the possibility that manufacturers might bear responsibility for the waste their products generate.
The Broader Pattern
Keep America Beautiful's approach—creating an organization that appears to address a problem while actually protecting the interests of those who cause it—has been replicated across many industries.
The fossil fuel industry funded organizations that cast doubt on climate science while positioning themselves as supporters of environmental responsibility. The sugar industry funded research blaming fat for health problems caused by sugar. Pharmaceutical companies funded pain patient advocacy groups that opposed restrictions on opioid prescriptions.
In each case, the pattern is similar: create or fund an organization with a public-interest mission, use that organization to shape public discourse in ways that protect corporate interests, and frame systemic problems as matters of individual choice.
Keep America Beautiful pioneered this approach. The "Crying Indian" didn't just make Americans feel bad about littering. It trained them to think about pollution as a problem created by careless individuals rather than profitable industries.
What Would Real Solutions Look Like?
If we wanted to actually solve the problems Keep America Beautiful claims to address, what would we do?
We might start with container deposit legislation—bottle bills that require deposits on beverage containers. States with bottle bills have dramatically higher recycling rates for covered containers. Oregon, which has had a bottle bill since 1971, recovers over 80 percent of its beverage containers. States without bottle bills typically recover less than 30 percent.
We might implement extended producer responsibility for packaging, requiring manufacturers to fund the collection and recycling of the packaging they produce. This would create market incentives to design packaging that's easier to recycle and to reduce unnecessary packaging overall.
We might ban certain types of particularly problematic packaging—single-use plastic bags, polystyrene foam containers, non-recyclable multi-material packaging. Many jurisdictions have already done this. The sky hasn't fallen.
We might require cigarette manufacturers to use biodegradable filters or to fund cleanup of cigarette butt litter. We might ban smoking in parks and on beaches. We might require that the true environmental cost of tobacco be reflected in its price.
These are upstream solutions. They address the problem at its source rather than trying to manage it after the fact. They place responsibility on the entities that profit from creating disposable products rather than on individual consumers and communities.
Keep America Beautiful has never supported any of these approaches.
The Individual Action Trap
None of this is to say that individual actions don't matter. They do. It's genuinely better to recycle your bottles than to throw them in the trash. It's genuinely better to dispose of your trash properly than to litter. Volunteer cleanups do make communities cleaner and more pleasant.
But there's a danger in focusing exclusively on individual action. It can make us feel like we're solving a problem when we're actually just managing its symptoms. It can distract us from asking why the problem exists in the first place and whether there might be systemic solutions.
If you spend your Saturday picking up litter in your local park, that's a good thing. But if that's all that happens—if we never ask why there's so much disposable packaging being produced, or why manufacturers aren't responsible for the waste their products generate, or why we've designed an economy around single-use items that are discarded after moments of use—then we're not solving the problem. We're just cleaning up after it.
This is precisely what critics mean when they call Keep America Beautiful a greenwashing operation. The organization does real work. It does make communities cleaner. But by focusing exclusively on individual behavior and community action, it ensures that the underlying systems that generate waste remain unchallenged.
The Present Day
Keep America Beautiful continues its work today. In 2023, the organization launched a podcast called "Do Beautiful Things," hosted by the organization's president and CEO Jenny Lawson. The podcast covers policies, behaviors, and business solutions that can help create more sustainable communities. It features expert interviews and aims to provide practical sustainability tips.
The organization runs America Recycles Day each year. It maintains its network of affiliate organizations and partners. It conducts research on litter and recycling. It encourages communities to organize cleanups and educational programs.
And it continues to frame environmental problems as matters of individual choice and community action, never quite getting around to the question of whether the companies that founded it might bear some responsibility for the waste they produce.
The Crying Indian no longer appears in Keep America Beautiful's materials. The advertisement became too embarrassing once Iron Eyes Cody's true ancestry was widely known. But the message the Crying Indian delivered—that pollution is your fault, not the fault of the industries that manufacture disposable products—remains as influential as ever.
Every time you feel guilty about forgetting your reusable shopping bag, every time you carefully rinse out a plastic container before putting it in the recycling bin, every time you pick up a piece of litter on a walk and feel virtuous about it, you're living in the world that Keep America Beautiful helped create.
It's not an accident that we think about pollution this way. It's the result of seventy years of very effective messaging by an organization created specifically to make us think about it this way.
People start pollution. People can stop it.
Or maybe—just maybe—the companies that profit from manufacturing billions of disposable items could take some responsibility for what happens to those items after they're used.