Close to 70 years ago, some of the biggest producers of single-use plastic came up with a genius idea to shirk responsibility for their environmental impact. Global citizens, especially Americans, are still paying the price for their actions today.
In a well-publicized commercial, a depicted Native American chief (who was actually played by an often type casted Italian-American actor) shed a single tear looking at all the litter in his homeland. The Keep America Beautiful organization’s widely known “crying Indian” commercial was one of the biggest pieces of video media of the time and was later used commonly as a representation of the environmental movement. Besides the problems of misrepresentation and cultural appropriation, this was actually a perfect example of greenwashing: a company or group of companies trying to appear more environmentally friendly than they truly were.
The nonprofit organization Keep American Beautiful was established in the early 1950s. On the surface, it was a charity aiming to reduce litter in the environment and make the American wild a prettier place. At a deeper level, the Keep America Beautiful Foundation was rooted in collaboration with some of the nation’s biggest producers of plastic waste, including Coca Cola (among other big names like McDonalds, Pepsi, Keurig, and Nestle). As Coca-Cola was moving away from its reusable model — did you know that Coca Cola used to come in glass bottles that would be returned to the company and refilled? — to that of disposable plastic bottles, it wanted to make sure that it wasn’t seen as the villain and polluter by the American public.
The commercial, among many similar efforts, contributed to the culture of shame and individual blame around environmental issues that’s commonly seen today. The idea behind it might have been that when you looked at an ocean shore covered in trash, you wouldn’t think to yourself that Coca Cola is killing the planet. You’d think to yourself how evil it was that your fellow citizens are littering in the beautiful ocean. You’d feel more anger at your fellow citizens than you might otherwise be feeling at the root cause.
Even today, companies like Coca Cola are finding new ways to preserve their public images without changing their damaging models of business. Sprite bottles were changed in the past couple of years to a generic clear color instead of the iconic green. They cited a couple of different reasons, but some point out a more sinister cause: the well-known green color shows up clearly in pictures of landfills, ocean trash, and other pollutants. Sprite didn’t want their brand to be associated with the very problems they were enabling, so they took the easiest path away and found a workaround.
The championing of recycling as a catch-all solution to single use products is another clear-cut greenwashing display. In reality, around only 6% of post-consumer plastic is actually getting recycled. When looking at recycling, it’s also important to consider that many materials like plastic degrade partially through the recycling process and are turned into a lesser-quality material. Post consumer plastics, even those from the most easily recycled sources like bottles and rigid containers, can often only be turned into materials like carpet or lumber. Plastic recycling can’t be done infinitely; after a certain number of times being melted and reformed, the material can’t be used the same way. Recycling is nice for damage control, but it was never intended in its original invention to be a first resort.
In the battle of climate change, sometimes we can get stuck in the cycle of blaming ourselves and each other. Guilt and shame around personal choices can keep us paralyzed, and one of the best ways forward can be legislative action. Some states like California have adopted laws that hold producers more responsible for the waste they allow, often requiring them to contribute funds to recycling plants or change the design of their products to be reused or recycled more easily.
One of the best ways to fight climate change, pollution, and negative environmental impacts isn’t through individual action. It’s through your voice, willingness to hold companies responsible through boycotts or other means, and especially through your vote. Presidential and local elections will be held in November, and voting in both give some of the highest potential for true environmental change.
