So shall we “Keep America Beautiful” or is it too late? Earth Day “Clean Ups” are necessary, but they are also a cover up the fact that the real responsibility for trash lies with the corporations that create it in the first place.
The Keep America Beautiful campaign — the one with the fake crying Native American — was funded primarily by Coke and Pepsi. It stands out as one of the more successful efforts in the history of greenwashing.
The corporations behind the campaign wanted to shed themselves of the costly responsibility of having to take back their bottles. So laws were passed and the blame was cast onto us “litterers.” Yes, they even created that label as part of their campaign. It was made our fault. by design. The success these bottling companies had in shedding legal responsibility for their product’s packaging became a legal blueprint for every other corporate polluter.
For their part, the fossil fuel industry knew that we would never recycle plastic in any significant amounts, but promoted the lie that we would. See the latest Center For Climate Integrity’s latest report, The Fraud of Plastic Recycling: How Big Oil and the plastics industry deceived the public for decades and caused the plastic waste crisis.
And so it’s been since. Everything covered in single use plastics. even in our organic health food stores. And lots and lots of plastic bags. I can still remember the grocery stores of broad planks and sawdust, wooden crates, paper bags and sacks. Small wonder that scientists are predicting that at this rate, there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050.
Clean Ups have their value of course. Removing trash from our beaches, parks, and woods is important work. This weekend, The Mastic Beach Conservancy removed over 200 tires from their marshes. Such clean ups are rallying points for the community, a way to work shoulder to shoulder with your neighbors.
Many tons of trash will be removed today across the globe. However, given the immensity of the trash problem, we need to advocate for less trash being produced each year. We must begin to address the problem upstream, where the plastics are being produced. When we do our cleanups, we should inventory what we pick up, and name the companies who created those candy wrappers or cigarette filters or disposable lighters, etc.
More often, we are using plastic bags to clean up the plastics in an effort that must feel like shoveling sand against the sea.
On our cleanups, we are working quite hard to keep America beautiful, but whatever we manage to pull out of a wood or swamp or pond is only fraction of what is out there. We must bear that in mind as we engage in our clean ups. We should all be a little angry that we have to do this in the first place. The planet is paying the price for corporate greed, and they need to be called out for that if we are to really address the plastics problem.
The best we can do individually to keep America beautiful is to avoid as much as possible buying anything with plastic in it unless you are 100% sure it will be recycled. The fact that this will be very difficult to do is all you need to know. This is about profit for the fossil fuel industry. We need more choices besides plastic.
Then there’s community composting. That is one way to keep America beautiful: One community at a time.