History
Keep America Beautiful was founded in 1953 by consortium of American businesses (including founding member Philip Morris, Anheuser-Busch, PepsiCo, and Coca-Cola) nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and concerned individuals in reaction to the growing problem of highway litter that followed the construction of the Interstate Highway System, and an increasingly mobile and convenience-oriented American consumer. The original goal of the organization was to reduce litter through public service advertising (PSA) campaigns.
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", as opposed to the New York Transit Authority. There is some confusion over the origin of the actual word "litterbug" due to several early uses of it in widespread public service advertisements. It was, in fact, coined by Paul B. Gioni, a copywriter in New York City who originated it for The American Ad Council in 1947. Keep America Beautiful joined with the Ad Council in 1961 to dramatize the idea that every individual must help protect against the terrible effects litter has on the environment.
A popular television campaign theme in 1963, with copy written by Paul B. Gioni who also coined the word "litterbug" in 1947, was "Every Litter Bit Hurts". Another appeared in 1964 featuring character Susan Spotless. In 1970 KAB began distributing a free brochure; more than 100,000 copies were requested within 4 months.
On Earth Day 1971, a new campaign was launched with the theme "People Start Pollution. People can stop it" featuring the now iconic "Crying Indian" played by Iron Eyes Cody.
In 1975 Keep America Beautiful introduced its "Clean Community System" which encouraged local communities to prevent litter through education efforts, advertising, local research, mapping of litter "hotspots", and clean up activities. During the height of the campaign KAB received over 2,000 letters a month from people wanting to join their local programs. The "Clean Community System" evolved into KAB's current network of roughly 580 local "Keep My Town Beautiful" organizations nationwide. By the end of the campaign locals had succeeded to reduce litter by 88%.
In 1999 Keep America Beautiful introduced its annual "Great American Cleanup" campaign, where volunteers are organized to clean up litter and illegal dumpsites in their communities, remove graffiti, and plant trees, flowers and community gardens.
Read more about this topic: Keep America Beautiful
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“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)