Keep America Beautiful Is Founded

Keep America Beautiful (KAB) is a nonprofit organization established in 1953 in response to the growing litter problem in the United States. Founded by executives from the beverage-container industry, KAB aimed to promote litter consciousness and encourage civic engagement to combat waste. The organization gained prominence in the 1960s with its "litterbug" campaign, which, despite initial criticism, became a national phenomenon. In the 1970s, KAB shifted its approach to focus on educational programs, notably the Clean Community System, which emphasized local leadership and community pride. This initiative successfully reduced litter in various cities, inspiring similar programs across the country.

KAB's efforts extended beyond litter reduction to include recycling and waste management, leading to the development of tailored anti-litter legislation in collaboration with local governments. The organization's impact has been significant, influencing not only American communities but also inspiring international counterparts like The Tidy Britain Group and Clean Japan. Despite facing skepticism due to its corporate ties, KAB has maintained a robust volunteer network, contributing to its continued success in promoting a cleaner environment.

Full Article

Keep America Beautiful Is Founded

Keep America Beautiful was created and sponsored by private corporations, nonprofit organizations, and governmental agencies in 1953 to confront the growing garbage problem in the United States. Critics of KAB have accused the organization of corporate greenwashing, producing public service ad campaigns and community programs that appear to be environmentally friendly but instead deflect most of the responsibility for plastic pollution from KAB's corporate sponsors to individual consumers.

Date 1953

Locale United States

Key Figures

  • W. C. Stolk (fl. mid-twentieth century),
  • Smith Rairdon (fl. mid-twentieth century),
  • E. V. Lahey (fl. mid-twentieth century),
  • Homer Calver (fl. mid-twentieth century),
  • Joseph Battley (fl. mid-twentieth century),
  • Henry Kuni (fl. mid-twentieth century), and
  • E. K. Walsh (fl. mid-twentieth century), American businessman who became one of the first directors of Keep America Beautiful (KAB)
  • Iron Eyes Cody (1907-1999), Espera Oscar DeCorti, actor

Summary of Event

The accumulation of unwanted material, or garbage, has always been a problem for human societies, but it became a particularly grievous affliction during the industrial age. Trash was pervasive in most US cities of the 1880s and 1890s. The streets were strewn with rubbish, and decomposing garbage seeped into the underground water reserves and accumulated in huge, decomposing piles next to hospitals and schoolyards. In cities like St. Louis, New York, and Chicago, people had to step over horse manure as they made their way along the streets.

Some cities employed contractors to collect the unwanted refuse, but disposal remained a problem. Some cities practiced ocean dumping, while others fed their garbage to swine, which were themselves great waste producers; this practice, which was not totally abandoned until the 1950s, was also unhealthy, because pigs that were fed untreated garbage often became infected with Trichinella spiralis, a parasite potentially deadly to humans.

These measures and others like them were effective in disposing of trash, but they did not address the root causes of waste production, namely, affluence, consumerism, and manufacturing practices such as planned obsolescence and single-use product packaging. By the 1950s, Americans had increased not only in number but also in prosperity. Most had jobs and thus more money to spend on things they would eventually throw away. Mobility was a major theme of life in the United States, and many people who had grown up in filthy, overpopulated cities left with their families for newly built suburban communities where they could purchase relatively inexpensive homes. A complex highway system quickly evolved in part as a response to this migration, and the motorists of the 1950s began to transfer the urban garbage problem to the countryside.

Keep America Beautiful (KAB) was founded in 1953 to stave off the tide of garbage. Over the next twenty years, the organization grew in size and scope, promoting litter consciousness in the printed media and on national television. KAB also worked at the local level to motivate civic and individual action. Its Clean Community System sought to educate people about the causes of the garbage problem and encourage them to pressure city governments to enact anti-litter legislation.

Keep America Beautiful was founded by executives of the beverage-container industry, however, and for this reason, its programs were often sharply criticized by conservationists. Environmental advocacy groups, like the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society, initially supported KAB, but resigned from the organization's advisory board after some KAB leaders opposed bottle-deposit legislation that would have incentivized recycling and reuse. Proponents of KAB argued that dozens of corporate sponsors funneled millions of dollars into the organization annually, and that despite its corporate connections and allegedly tainted motives, KAB had an impressive track record. Supporters touted its early public service efforts for bringing the garbage issue to the forefront of public consciousness.

In the 1960s, KAB began a “litterbug” campaign on television and radio. The program helped make litter consciousness a national obsession and the term “litterbug” a household word. This series of commercial spots drew criticism from the start, even from within the KAB organization. The litterbug slogan and accompanying jingle were considered too juvenile to sway the campaign’s primarily adult target audience effectively. KAB had borrowed the melody from the schoolyard tune “Oh Dear, What Can the Matter Be?” and changed the words to “Please, please, don’t be a litterbug,” delivered in a squeaky, childlike falsetto. Conservationists and other critics charged that the campaign did not address the most significant root causes of pollution. They argued that the term "litterbug" put disproportionate emphasis on individual consumers' anti-littering efforts and not enough on corporations, including many of KAB's sponsors, that created single-use plastic packaging in the first place.

In the 1970s, KAB experimented with more sophisticated media material, the most memorable of which was a television public service announcement it created with the Ad Council, "People Start Pollution. People Can Start It," also known as the "Crying Indian" ad. The ad featured Italian American actor Iron Eyes Cody (Espera Oscar DeCorti) as an unnamed, conservation-minded American Indian. The protagonist was shown paddling his canoe up a polluted river, then standing on the riverbank surveying the area around him. Trash lay everywhere; in the distance, a factory belched black, toxic smoke. A passing motorist tossed something that landed at the protagonist's feet. He stared at the camera as a single tear coursed down his face. The spot closed with the voiceover comment, “People start pollution, people can stop it.” The ad was simple, but its impact was much greater than the earlier litterbug material. Millions saw the ad, and the case against littering gained many new converts. The ad had a negative impact as well, however. The National Congress of American Indians Fund (NCAI) criticized the ad for its use of stereotypical imagery of American Indian and Alaska Native people and for misappropriating Native culture. In 2023, KAB announced that it was giving its rights to the ad to the NCAI.

Significance

In 1976, KAB employed a team of scientists and researchers to study the litter problem and find a way to end it. After six months, the research team concluded that the trouble was litter tolerance—in short, an individual behavioral problem for which the solution was education. The team suggested a program at the local level that stressed measurement, communication, leadership, and community pride. This program, named the Clean Community System, was first tested in Tampa, Florida; Macon, Georgia; and Charlotte, North Carolina. The cities cooperated and managed substantially to reduce the amount of litter on their streets and elsewhere. Macon reduced its measurable litter by an impressive 80 percent. As a result, the city borrowed the concept of the Clean Community System to create an educational anti-drug program aimed at teenagers.

KAB was strongly encouraged by the success of the pilot programs and offered the Clean Community System to other cities and towns across the country. Houston and Indianapolis were early converts, and both achieved substantial success. Other large cities, including Chicago, joined the program, and eventually state governments also linked themselves to the KAB network. Moreover, KAB relied on millions of volunteers in hundreds of communities across the country.

KAB attributed the organization's success to its strength and efficiency. A city or town could participate in the program only after having satisfied several rather stringent requirements. These included the official endorsement of community leaders, such as aldermen, business entities, school boards, sanitation officials, and media executives; and local funding to help create a volunteer organization and provide it with the materials needed to be effective. KAB provided seminars and workshops to the cities that met these requirements.

The organization also worked with local government officials to create prevention-based anti-litter legislation. Ordinances were tailored to the specific needs of each community to maximize their effectiveness. Later, KAB expanded its programs to address the issues of recycling and existing waste management.

Inspired by KAB, other national agencies created anti-littering programs of their own. To encourage them, KAB offered loans, direct grants, and sometimes outright funding. Under one such grant, a litter-measuring technique was developed. This index, a kind of garbage barometer, allowed researchers to identify the litter hotspots in their respective communities. Researchers took photographic samplings of target sites, from which the litter was counted. Target sites were sampled biannually, allowing researchers to evaluate the progress of litter collection efforts in a given area.

KAB eventually inspired other nations to address their litter problems. Organizations such as The Tidy Britain Group, Clean Japan, Keep Australia Tidy, and Clean World International all took their initial concept from KAB.

In 2021, KAB produced the Keep American Beautiful 2020 National Litter Study, a definitive study on litter in the United States that built on a 2009 study looking at multiple facets of litter, including observational, behavioral, public perception, and cost. It was the largest study of its kind ever produced, and KAB considered it successful, despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Greenpeace and other environmental advocates criticized the report, however, saying that it failed to address the root causes of plastic pollution by corporations, including McDonald's, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Nestle.

Bibliography

Alexander, Judd H. In Defense of Garbage. Praeger, 1993.

Blumberg, Louis, and Robert Gottlieb. War on Waste: Can America Win Its Battle with Garbage? Island Press, 1989.

Kaur, Harmeet. "Native American Group Gets Rights to Famed 'Crying Indian' Ad." CNN US, 28 Feb. 2023, www.cnn.com/2023/02/28/us/crying-indian-ad-campaign-cec. Accessed 11 Mar. 2026.

"Keep America Beautiful." SourceWatch, The Center for Media and Democracy, 25 Dec. 2019, www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Keep_America_Beautiful. Accessed 11 Mar. 2026.

“Keep America Beautiful 2020 National Litter Study.” Keep America Beautiful, 2023, kab.org/litter-study/. Accessed 11 Mar. 2026.

Ledoux, Denis. “A Boost for Bottle Laws.” The Progressive, Feb. 1980, pp. 10-11.

Lee, Sally. The Throwaway Society. Franklin Watts, 1990.

Melosi, Martin V. Garbage in the Cities: Refuse, Reform, and the Environment. Rev. ed., University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005.

Plummer, Bradford. “The Origins of Anti-Litter Campaigns.” Mother Jones, 2006, www.motherjones.com/politics/2006/05/origins-anti-litter-campaigns/. Accessed 11 Mar. 2026.

Schmall, Emily. "'Crying Indian' Ad That Targeted Pollution to Be Retired." The New York Times, 27 Feb. 2023, www.nytimes.com/2023/02/27/us/native-american-pollution-ad.html. Accessed 11 Mar. 2026.

Strand, Ginger. "The Crying Indian." Orion, Nov./Dec. 2008, orionmagazine.org/article/the-crying-indian/. Accessed 11 Mar. 2026.

Rathje, William, and Cullen Murphy. Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage. University of Arizona Press, 2001.

Full Article

Keep America Beautiful Is Founded

Keep America Beautiful was created and sponsored by private corporations, nonprofit organizations, and governmental agencies in 1953 to confront the growing garbage problem in the United States. Critics of KAB have accused the organization of corporate greenwashing, producing public service ad campaigns and community programs that appear to be environmentally friendly but instead deflect most of the responsibility for plastic pollution from KAB's corporate sponsors to individual consumers.

Date 1953

Locale United States

Key Figures

  • W. C. Stolk (fl. mid-twentieth century),
  • Smith Rairdon (fl. mid-twentieth century),
  • E. V. Lahey (fl. mid-twentieth century),
  • Homer Calver (fl. mid-twentieth century),
  • Joseph Battley (fl. mid-twentieth century),
  • Henry Kuni (fl. mid-twentieth century), and
  • E. K. Walsh (fl. mid-twentieth century), American businessman who became one of the first directors of Keep America Beautiful (KAB)
  • Iron Eyes Cody (1907-1999), Espera Oscar DeCorti, actor

Summary of Event

The accumulation of unwanted material, or garbage, has always been a problem for human societies, but it became a particularly grievous affliction during the industrial age. Trash was pervasive in most US cities of the 1880s and 1890s. The streets were strewn with rubbish, and decomposing garbage seeped into the underground water reserves and accumulated in huge, decomposing piles next to hospitals and schoolyards. In cities like St. Louis, New York, and Chicago, people had to step over horse manure as they made their way along the streets.

Some cities employed contractors to collect the unwanted refuse, but disposal remained a problem. Some cities practiced ocean dumping, while others fed their garbage to swine, which were themselves great waste producers; this practice, which was not totally abandoned until the 1950s, was also unhealthy, because pigs that were fed untreated garbage often became infected with Trichinella spiralis, a parasite potentially deadly to humans.

These measures and others like them were effective in disposing of trash, but they did not address the root causes of waste production, namely, affluence, consumerism, and manufacturing practices such as planned obsolescence and single-use product packaging. By the 1950s, Americans had increased not only in number but also in prosperity. Most had jobs and thus more money to spend on things they would eventually throw away. Mobility was a major theme of life in the United States, and many people who had grown up in filthy, overpopulated cities left with their families for newly built suburban communities where they could purchase relatively inexpensive homes. A complex highway system quickly evolved in part as a response to this migration, and the motorists of the 1950s began to transfer the urban garbage problem to the countryside.

Keep America Beautiful (KAB) was founded in 1953 to stave off the tide of garbage. Over the next twenty years, the organization grew in size and scope, promoting litter consciousness in the printed media and on national television. KAB also worked at the local level to motivate civic and individual action. Its Clean Community System sought to educate people about the causes of the garbage problem and encourage them to pressure city governments to enact anti-litter legislation.

Keep America Beautiful was founded by executives of the beverage-container industry, however, and for this reason, its programs were often sharply criticized by conservationists. Environmental advocacy groups, like the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society, initially supported KAB, but resigned from the organization's advisory board after some KAB leaders opposed bottle-deposit legislation that would have incentivized recycling and reuse. Proponents of KAB argued that dozens of corporate sponsors funneled millions of dollars into the organization annually, and that despite its corporate connections and allegedly tainted motives, KAB had an impressive track record. Supporters touted its early public service efforts for bringing the garbage issue to the forefront of public consciousness.

In the 1960s, KAB began a “litterbug” campaign on television and radio. The program helped make litter consciousness a national obsession and the term “litterbug” a household word. This series of commercial spots drew criticism from the start, even from within the KAB organization. The litterbug slogan and accompanying jingle were considered too juvenile to sway the campaign’s primarily adult target audience effectively. KAB had borrowed the melody from the schoolyard tune “Oh Dear, What Can the Matter Be?” and changed the words to “Please, please, don’t be a litterbug,” delivered in a squeaky, childlike falsetto. Conservationists and other critics charged that the campaign did not address the most significant root causes of pollution. They argued that the term "litterbug" put disproportionate emphasis on individual consumers' anti-littering efforts and not enough on corporations, including many of KAB's sponsors, that created single-use plastic packaging in the first place.

In the 1970s, KAB experimented with more sophisticated media material, the most memorable of which was a television public service announcement it created with the Ad Council, "People Start Pollution. People Can Start It," also known as the "Crying Indian" ad. The ad featured Italian American actor Iron Eyes Cody (Espera Oscar DeCorti) as an unnamed, conservation-minded American Indian. The protagonist was shown paddling his canoe up a polluted river, then standing on the riverbank surveying the area around him. Trash lay everywhere; in the distance, a factory belched black, toxic smoke. A passing motorist tossed something that landed at the protagonist's feet. He stared at the camera as a single tear coursed down his face. The spot closed with the voiceover comment, “People start pollution, people can stop it.” The ad was simple, but its impact was much greater than the earlier litterbug material. Millions saw the ad, and the case against littering gained many new converts. The ad had a negative impact as well, however. The National Congress of American Indians Fund (NCAI) criticized the ad for its use of stereotypical imagery of American Indian and Alaska Native people and for misappropriating Native culture. In 2023, KAB announced that it was giving its rights to the ad to the NCAI.

Significance

In 1976, KAB employed a team of scientists and researchers to study the litter problem and find a way to end it. After six months, the research team concluded that the trouble was litter tolerance—in short, an individual behavioral problem for which the solution was education. The team suggested a program at the local level that stressed measurement, communication, leadership, and community pride. This program, named the Clean Community System, was first tested in Tampa, Florida; Macon, Georgia; and Charlotte, North Carolina. The cities cooperated and managed substantially to reduce the amount of litter on their streets and elsewhere. Macon reduced its measurable litter by an impressive 80 percent. As a result, the city borrowed the concept of the Clean Community System to create an educational anti-drug program aimed at teenagers.

KAB was strongly encouraged by the success of the pilot programs and offered the Clean Community System to other cities and towns across the country. Houston and Indianapolis were early converts, and both achieved substantial success. Other large cities, including Chicago, joined the program, and eventually state governments also linked themselves to the KAB network. Moreover, KAB relied on millions of volunteers in hundreds of communities across the country.

KAB attributed the organization's success to its strength and efficiency. A city or town could participate in the program only after having satisfied several rather stringent requirements. These included the official endorsement of community leaders, such as aldermen, business entities, school boards, sanitation officials, and media executives; and local funding to help create a volunteer organization and provide it with the materials needed to be effective. KAB provided seminars and workshops to the cities that met these requirements.

The organization also worked with local government officials to create prevention-based anti-litter legislation. Ordinances were tailored to the specific needs of each community to maximize their effectiveness. Later, KAB expanded its programs to address the issues of recycling and existing waste management.

Inspired by KAB, other national agencies created anti-littering programs of their own. To encourage them, KAB offered loans, direct grants, and sometimes outright funding. Under one such grant, a litter-measuring technique was developed. This index, a kind of garbage barometer, allowed researchers to identify the litter hotspots in their respective communities. Researchers took photographic samplings of target sites, from which the litter was counted. Target sites were sampled biannually, allowing researchers to evaluate the progress of litter collection efforts in a given area.

KAB eventually inspired other nations to address their litter problems. Organizations such as The Tidy Britain Group, Clean Japan, Keep Australia Tidy, and Clean World International all took their initial concept from KAB.

In 2021, KAB produced the Keep American Beautiful 2020 National Litter Study, a definitive study on litter in the United States that built on a 2009 study looking at multiple facets of litter, including observational, behavioral, public perception, and cost. It was the largest study of its kind ever produced, and KAB considered it successful, despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Greenpeace and other environmental advocates criticized the report, however, saying that it failed to address the root causes of plastic pollution by corporations, including McDonald's, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Nestle.

Bibliography

Alexander, Judd H. In Defense of Garbage. Praeger, 1993.

Blumberg, Louis, and Robert Gottlieb. War on Waste: Can America Win Its Battle with Garbage? Island Press, 1989.

Kaur, Harmeet. "Native American Group Gets Rights to Famed 'Crying Indian' Ad." CNN US, 28 Feb. 2023, www.cnn.com/2023/02/28/us/crying-indian-ad-campaign-cec. Accessed 11 Mar. 2026.

"Keep America Beautiful." SourceWatch, The Center for Media and Democracy, 25 Dec. 2019, www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Keep_America_Beautiful. Accessed 11 Mar. 2026.

“Keep America Beautiful 2020 National Litter Study.” Keep America Beautiful, 2023, kab.org/litter-study/. Accessed 11 Mar. 2026.

Ledoux, Denis. “A Boost for Bottle Laws.” The Progressive, Feb. 1980, pp. 10-11.

Lee, Sally. The Throwaway Society. Franklin Watts, 1990.

Melosi, Martin V. Garbage in the Cities: Refuse, Reform, and the Environment. Rev. ed., University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005.

Plummer, Bradford. “The Origins of Anti-Litter Campaigns.” Mother Jones, 2006, www.motherjones.com/politics/2006/05/origins-anti-litter-campaigns/. Accessed 11 Mar. 2026.

Schmall, Emily. "'Crying Indian' Ad That Targeted Pollution to Be Retired." The New York Times, 27 Feb. 2023, www.nytimes.com/2023/02/27/us/native-american-pollution-ad.html. Accessed 11 Mar. 2026.

Strand, Ginger. "The Crying Indian." Orion, Nov./Dec. 2008, orionmagazine.org/article/the-crying-indian/. Accessed 11 Mar. 2026.

Rathje, William, and Cullen Murphy. Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage. University of Arizona Press, 2001.