Keep America Beautiful is a nonprofit organization founded in 1953. It is the largest community improvement organization in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

, with more than 700 state and community-based affiliate organizations and more than 1,000 partner organizations. Keep America Beautiful aims to end littering, to improve

recycling Recycling is the process of converting waste materials into new materials and objects. The Energy recycling, recovery of energy from waste materials is often included in this concept. The recyclability of a material depends on its ability t ...

, and to beautify American communities. The organization's narrow focus on littering and recycling has been criticized as

greenwashing Greenwashing (a compound word modeled on "whitewash"), also called "green sheen", is a form of advertising or marketing spin in which green PR and green marketing are deceptively used to persuade the public that an organization's products, aim ...

in that it diverts responsibility away from corporations and industries.

History

Keep America Beautiful was founded in December 1953 by a group of American corporations (including companies such as the American Can Company, the

Continental Can Company Continental Can Company (CCC) was an American producer of metal containers and packaging company, that was based in Stamford, Connecticut."CONTINENTAL GROUP COMPANY." ''International Directory of Company Histories''. Ed. Thomas Derdak. Vol. 1. Chic ...

, and Owens-Illinois Glass Co.), nonprofit organizations (the Izaak Walton League, National Council of State Garden Clubs, and the U.S. Brewers Foundation), government agencies (Connecticut State Highway Dept., N.Y. State Department of Public Works), and individuals in reaction to the growing problem of highway litter that followed the construction of the

Interstate Highway System The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, commonly known as the Interstate Highway System, is a network of controlled-access highways that forms part of the National Highway System in the United States. T ...

, and an increasingly mobile and convenience-oriented consumer culture. The original goal of the organization was to reduce litter through public education, including

public service announcement 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. In the UK, they are generally called a public information film (PIF); in Hong Kong, ...

(PSA) campaigns, and engage tri-sector partnerships through the support of industry, government and nonprofits. Keep America Beautiful conducted many local PSA campaigns early in its history. One of these early campaigns in Pennsylvania (

PennDOT The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) oversees transportation issues in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The administrator of PennDOT is the Pennsylvania Secretary of Transportation, currently Yassmin Gramian. Presently, P ...

) some attribute to having coined the term "

litterbug Litterbug or Litter bug may refer to: * One who litters in public places (see also ''litterbug'' word history) * litterbug (band), a Canadian indie rock band * Litterbug (comics), a Marvel Comics character * ''The Litterbug ''The Litterbug'' ...

," although the National Council of State Garden Clubs representative exhibited a "litter bug" emblem at the first Keep America Beautiful organizational meeting. 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 The Advertising Council, commonly known as the Ad Council, is an American nonprofit organization that produces, distributes, and promotes public service announcements on behalf of various sponsors, including nonprofit organizations, non-governme ...

in 1947. 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. Gioni came up with the 1963 television campaign theme "Every Litter Bit Hurts." Another campaign in 1964 featured the character Susan Spotless. In 1970, Keep America Beautiful began distributing free brochures. More than 100,000 copies of the brochure were requested within four months. In 1971, on

Earth Day 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 (formerly Earth Day Network) including 1 b ...

, 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, the television ad, narrated by actor

William Conrad William Conrad (born John William Cann Jr., September 27, 1920 – February 11, 1994) was an American actor, producer, and director whose entertainment career spanned five decades in radio, film, and television, peaking in popularity when he s ...

with Peter Sarstedt's instrumental "Overture" playing in the background, featured Italian-American actor

Iron Eyes Cody Iron Eyes Cody (born Espera Oscar de Corti, April 3, 1904 – January 4, 1999) was an American actor of Italian descent who portrayed Native Americans in Hollywood films, famously as ''Chief Iron Eyes'' in Bob Hope's '' The Paleface'' (1948). ...

, 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. 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. The "Clean Community System" evolved into Keep America Beautiful's current network of roughly 600 state and community-based affiliates nationwide. In 1999, Keep America Beautiful introduced an annual "Great American Cleanup" campaign. The national spring cleanup focuses on local efforts at beautification. Volunteers organize to remove litter and debris from roadsides, highways, shorelines and waterways; plant trees, flowers and

community gardens A community garden is a piece of land gardened or cultivated by a group of people individually or collectively. Normally in community gardens, the land is divided into individual plots. Each individual gardener is responsible for their own plo ...

; clean and restore

nature trail An educational trail (or sometimes educational path), nature trail or nature walk is a specially developed hiking trail or footpath that runs through the countryside, along which there are marked stations or stops next to points of natural, tec ...

s, recreation areas and playgrounds; recycle aluminum cans, plastic bottles, electronics, paper products, scrap tires, and clothing; rebuild public spaces in communities struck by natural disasters; and much more. In 2018, the 65th anniversary of Keep America Beautiful, the nonprofit advertised its new PSA, "Let's Talk About America", which has been aired more than 115,000 times and received more than 1 billion media impressions to date.

Accomplishments

Keep America Beautiful is best known for its "Crying Indian" public service advertisement (PSA) which launched on

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. Keep America Beautiful was the first organization to bring littering to national attention. It made "litterbug” a household word. In 2018, the Great American Cleanup, the nation's largest community improvement program, celebrated its 20th year. Keep America Beautiful, along with network of affiliates and partner organizations, engaged volunteers across the country who logged 9.4 million volunteer hours in helping to clean public spaces; improve and beautify roads, shorelines and waterways; and plant trees, flowers, and gardens. In total, 24.7 million pounds of litter and 68 million pounds of recyclables were collected. 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

representing that if all individuals picked up 152 pieces of litter, there would be no litter on the ground until someone littered again.

Programs

Cigarette Litter Prevention Program

The Cigarette Litter Prevention Program (CLPP), created by Keep America Beautiful in 2002, is the nation's largest program aimed at eliminating

cigarette A cigarette is a narrow cylinder containing a combustible material, typically tobacco, that is rolled into thin paper for smoking. The cigarette is ignited at one end, causing it to smolder; the resulting smoke is orally inhaled via the opp ...

litter. Since its inception, the program has been implemented in more than 1,700 communities nationwide. Throughout its history, the CLPP has helped reduce cigarette litter in the communities in which it has been implemented by an average of 50 percent. Recognizing the presence of ash receptacles correlates with lower rates of

cigarette butt A cigarette is a narrow cylinder containing a combustible material, typically tobacco, that is rolled into thin paper for smoking. The cigarette is ignited at one end, causing it to smolder; the resulting smoke is orally inhaled via the oppo ...

littering, Keep America Beautiful has placed 10,000 litter stands in public settings through 2019.

Community Restoration and Resiliency Fund

The Keep America Beautiful Community Restoration and Resiliency Fund (CRRF) was launched in 2017 after

Hurricane Harvey Hurricane Harvey was a devastating Category 4 hurricane that made landfall on Texas and Louisiana in August 2017, causing catastrophic flooding and more than 100 deaths. It is tied with 2005's Hurricane Katrina as the costliest ...

's historic flooding in Texas and Louisiana and prior to

Hurricane Irma Hurricane Irma was an extremely powerful Cape Verde hurricane that caused widespread destruction across its path in September 2017. Irma was the first Category 5 hurricane to strike the Leeward Islands on record, followed by Maria two ...

coming ashore in Florida. Managed and administered by Keep America Beautiful, the fund provides long-term support in the form of grants to rebuild public spaces, such as parks, greenways, community gateways, main streets, downtown areas, and open spaces.

Plogging

Plogging, the act of picking up litter while jogging, debuted in Sweden in 2016 and was adopted by Keep America Beautiful in 2018 as it incorporates reducing litter, improving recycling, and beautifying communities – the three primary areas of work that Keep America Beautiful and its network of affiliates focus on. In 2019, Keep America Beautiful hosted its inaugural Trash Dash, a 5K plogging event in Connecticut, which resulted in the collection of more than 700 pounds of litter and recyclables.

Youth and education

Waste in Place is the Keep America Beautiful educational resource developed for prekindergarten through 12th grade students and educators. KAB Schools is a youth initiative offering schools educational programs. There are three learning service-learning projects, including a Waste Audit, Litter Free Places, and Trashless Tree Trails.

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 Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) is a national organization of local chapters which provide voluntary after-school programs for young people. The organization, which holds a congressional charter under Title 36 of the United States Code, h ...

, Hands on Network and the Points of Light Institute, the

Arbor Day Foundation The Arbor Day Foundation is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization dedicated to planting trees. The Arbor Day Foundation has more than one million members and has planted more than 350 million trees in neighborhoods, communities ...

, Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, National CleanUp Day, Ocean Conservancy, Sustainable Urban Forests Coalition, EARTHDAY.ORG, and Take Pride in America, among others. Scouting Keep America Beautiful Day was first cosponsored by Keep America Beautiful and the

Boy Scouts of America The Boy Scouts of America (BSA, colloquially the Boy Scouts) is one of the largest scouting organizations and one of the largest youth organizations in the United States, with about 1.2 million youth participants. The BSA was founded in ...

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."

Controversies

Keep America Beautiful's actions have been criticized as

. The organization's narrow focus on littering and

diverts responsibility away from corporations and industries. Despite self-identifying as having Native American ancestry with the stage name of

, Espera Oscar DeCorti was of Italian descent. This sparked accusations of

cultural appropriation Cultural appropriation is the inappropriate or unacknowledged adoption of an element or elements of one culture or identity by members of another culture or identity. This can be controversial when members of a dominant culture appropriate from ...

and

racial stereotyping An ethnic stereotype, racial stereotype or cultural stereotype involves part of a system of beliefs about typical characteristics of members of a given ethnic group, their status, societal and cultural norms. A national stereotype, or nationa ...

. Heather Rogers, creator of the 2005 documentary film ''Gone Tomorrow. The Hidden Life of Garbage'' and book of the same name, classifies Keep America Beautiful as one of the first

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. 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 product A disposable (also called disposable product) is a product designed for a single use after which it is recycled or is disposed as solid waste. The term is also sometimes used for products that may last several months (e.g. disposable air filte ...

s to consumers who improperly dispose of the non-returnable wrappers, filters, and beverage containers. 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. The

tobacco industry The tobacco industry comprises those persons and companies who are engaged in the growth, preparation for sale, shipment, advertisement, and distribution of tobacco and tobacco-related products. It is a global industry; tobacco can grow in any ...

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 ban Smoking bans, or smoke-free laws, are public policies, including criminal laws and occupational safety and health regulations, that prohibit tobacco smoking in certain spaces. The spaces most commonly affected by smoking bans are indoor workpl ...

s at parks and beaches. The tobacco industry has funded Keep America Beautiful and similar organizations internationally.

In popular culture

The "Crying Indian" ad has been parodied on '' Married... with Children'', '' Wayne's World 2'', ''

The Simpsons ''The Simpsons'' is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical depiction of American life, epitomized by the Simpson family, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, ...

'' episode "

Trash of the Titans "Trash of the Titans" is the twenty-second episode of the ninth season of the American animated television series ''The Simpsons''. The 200th episode of the series overall, it originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on April 26 ...

", the ''

Futurama ''Futurama'' is an American animated science fiction sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series follows the adventures of the professional slacker Philip J. Fry, who is cryogenically preserved for 1000 years ...

'' episode "

Where the Buggalo Roam "Where the Buggalo Roam" is the tenth episode in season three of the animated television series ''Futurama''. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on March 3, 2002. The title is a pun on a lyric from the classic Western fol ...

", the

Farrelly brothers Peter Farrelly and Bobby Farrelly, collectively referred to as the Farrelly brothers, are American screenwriters and directors. They have made eleven films together, including ''Dumb and Dumber'', '' Outside Providence'', and ''There's Something ...

movie '' Kingpin'', the ''

South Park ''South Park'' is an American animated sitcom created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone and developed by Brian Graden for Comedy Central. The series revolves around four boysStan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman, and Kenny McCormickand ...

'' episode " Go Fund Yourself", ''

The League ''The League'' is an American sitcom that aired on FX and later FXX from October 29, 2009, to December 9, 2015, for a total of seven seasons. The series, set in Chicago, Illinois, is a semi-improvised comedy show about a fantasy football leagu ...

'' episode " Yobogoya," the ''

Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law ''Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law'' is an American adult animated television sitcom created by Michael Ouweleen and Erik Richter for Cartoon Network's late-night programming block, Adult Swim. A spin-off of ''Space Ghost Coast to Coast'', the ...

'' episode "Back to the Present," and the '' Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt'' episode "Kimmy Finds Her Mom!". The ad was also parodied in an

E-Trade E-Trade Financial Corporation (stylized as E*TRADE) is a financial services subsidiary of Morgan Stanley, which offers an electronic trading platform to trade financial assets. The company receives revenue from interest income on margin balan ...

commercial that aired during

Super Bowl XXXV Super Bowl XXXV was an American football game between the American Football Conference (AFC) champion Baltimore Ravens and the National Football Conference (NFC) champion New York Giants to decide the National Football League (NFL) champion for ...

in 2001. Lassie was featured and recruited in helping to Keep America Beautiful by

Lady Bird Johnson Claudia Alta "Lady Bird" Johnson (''née'' Taylor; December 22, 1912 – July 11, 2007) was First Lady of the United States from 1963 to 1969 as the wife of President Lyndon B. Johnson. She previously served as Second Lady from 1961 to 1963 whe ...

as the Nation's Mascot and War Against Litter in the beautification campaign. Lassie is in a poster with a forest ranger and the caption reads: "Help Lassie Keep America Beautiful".

References

External links

Official website
{{Authority control Public service announcements of the United States Organizations established in 1953 Waste organizations Companies based in Stamford, Connecticut Litter Environment of the United States 1953 establishments in New York (state) Organizations based in Stamford, Connecticut Non-profit organizations based in Connecticut 1950s neologisms American advertising slogans Recycling organizations