keep america beautiful

On Earth Day, 1971, the Ad Council and Keep America Beautiful first aired this dramatic call for action on litter and pollution. They hired Iron Eyes Cody, who became known as 'the Crying Indian'. In actuality, he was Italian American actor Espera Oscar DeCorti, who had played Native American roles in Hollywood. The people behind the ad were the bottling and packaging industries who sought to turn the emphasis away from a growing culture of consumerism and the disposable containers that feeds it and toward individual responsibility and littering. The ad became one of the most famous and successful campaigns in advertising history. In the meantime, landfills and pollution have continued to increase toward a crisis point as containers become more and more difficult to recycle.

“Some people have a deep, abiding respect for the natural beauty that was once this country and some people don’t.”

“People start pollution. People can stop it."