Give a Hoot, Don't Pollute

Keep America Beautiful

In the seventies, there was a anti-littering campaign that included TV commercials in which a Native American is shown paddling a canoe on a small river. He passes floating litter and then there's a montage of huge smokestacks spewing out air pollutants. When the Native American comes up to the water's edge, there are many bottles and other trash littering the ground. He then walks up to a highway and there is a shot of many cars speeding by (showing air pollution) and then a shot of a huge bag of trash/garbage being thrown out of a  car window. The bag lands immediately in front of the Native American literally splashing up onto his feet.

Then comes the money shot (shown above) in which we see him turn to the camera with a tear rolling down his cheek.

The commercial in its entirety can be seen on You Tube by clicking the link below the picture.

Here is the narration that is heard as the images in the commercial are shown:

"Some people have a deep abiding respect for the natural beauty that was once this country and some don't. People start pollution, people can stop it."

I have two problems with this commerical.

1) Through the depiction of this one individual, the commercial portrays all the Native Americans as romantic caretakers of the natural environment and wildlife. While that may be true to some extent for some particular tribes, many historians believe that the Native Americans were just as good as squandering resources as any other people.

To me, the portrayal of the emotional Native American's reaction to pollution reinforces the ideation of the Native Americans as either a peaceful and kind people or vicious wild savages. Contrary to the popular perception of the nature of the Native Americans, the evidence I've come across suggests that they were not at either end of those extremes.

2) It shows that after more than 40 years, people have not used their "power to stop pollution." In fact, they've come up with all kinds of new ways to pollute the planet.

A side note: do the people really have the power to stop pollution? Its not like people can oust the corporate bigwigs from office by not voting for them in the next election.

Today, I did some investigation into today's level of pollution when it is in the form of littering. I usually jog for 55 - 65 minutes each day and cover about 3.5 miles. Along the way I've seen a lot of plastic bottles. My route is not along a busy street or highway, it is along the road in a very sparsely populated area. For the most part, the people driving on this road are not coming or going anywhere but from or to their homes. These are the people throwing trash out of their windows!

I bought what is called a tally counter on Amazon for under $3. As I ran, I counted the plastic beverage bottles.

As I made my count, I realized that another large proportion of the litter was in another form. Without looking ahead, can you guess what other type of litter I found common? I was really surprised at the source and number of these pieces of litter. There were the usual suspects; things like beer bottles and cans, soft drink cans, and strangely enough (to me) nip bottles. Of course, there were some unusual items as well.

OK, time to check out the tally:

1) Plastic Water Bottles: 134
2) Dunkin Donuts Plastic and Styrofoam  Cups: 122
3) Nip Bottles: 12
4) Hard Liqueur Bottles: 4
5) Assorted Soft Drink and Beer Cans: 41
6) Plastic Pails: 1
7) Shoes: 3 (none matching)
8) Day-Glo Glitter Pinwheels: 1
9) Bags of Discarded Used Kitty Litter: 3
10) Unidentifiable objects that were not part of the natural environment: 12

Clearly, plastic water bottles and Dunkin Donuts disposable cups are the bulk of the litter I encountered. Weird thought: if the plastic bottles are thrown on the side of the road, does that reduce the number of them in the great Pacific Ocean garbage patch?