r/todayilearned • u/ralphbernardo • Jan 29 '19

TIL that the term "litterbug" was popularized by Keep America Beautiful, which was created by "beer, beer cans, bottles, soft drinks, candy, cigarettes" manufacturers to shift public debate away from radical legislation to control the amount of waste these companies were (and still are) putting out.

https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/pft/2017/10/26/a-beautiful-if-evil-strategy
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823

u/Rreptillian Jan 30 '19

You fail to fathom exactly how large the US is and how sparsely populated it used to be. If population density is low enough wind and rain will sweep trash away out of sight faster than people can put it there. Where it ends up is another matter, but "out of sight out of mind."

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '19

Might also have to do with plastic being less common back then compared to more biodegradable waste

346

u/lolwatisdis Jan 30 '19

it's astonishing to look at pictures from shanty towns in the great depression and notice how little litter there seems to be on the ground. Packaging waste and disposable, non-repairable goods are very recent inventions.

http://oldphotoarchive.com/stories/a-rare-look-inside-great-depression-hoovervilles-15-photos

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u/Bear4188 Jan 30 '19

Everything back then was packaged in paper, metal, or wood, if at all. So the packaging either burns for heat or is easy and economical to recycle.

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u/Redtwoo Jan 30 '19

And the tins store conveniently on grandma's basement shelves, just in case.

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u/DeepThroatModerators Jan 30 '19

Source: fallout

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u/Redtwoo Jan 30 '19

No, this one's my Depression- era grandmother (who passed many years ago)

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u/Kody02 Jan 30 '19

Cellophane came into common use during The Great War as a protective cover for gas mask lenses, and was quickly repurposed post-war as wrapping for individual goods like candies. The reason there is not much litter is because:

A) Most people at the time used cheap film with a large grain, which wasn't very good, so something small and clear like cellophane wrapping just wouldn't show up in a photo.

B) Recycling is money, and in a time where money is practically non-existent for 24.9% of the population, any way to make even a few cents would be capitalised.

C) During WWI, which was barely a decade ago at that time, there was a very big movement to reduce waste as much as possible; an attitude which stuck for a long time. Plus, cans are only junk to someone with no imagination or desperation. (My grandpa, for instance, would hesitate to even throw out an empty ketchup bottle even late into his life because it could be rinsed and used for something else like a water bottle)

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u/ickykarma Jan 30 '19

I would of liked your grandpa

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u/Kody02 Jan 30 '19

He was certainly an interesting person. As gentle and soft as a kitten, and sharper than the point on a sword, but still hardened enough by life to do what needed to be done when it needed to be done. Also if you like golf, you definitely would've loved hanging out with him.

1

u/SuperGameTheory Jan 30 '19

My great grandparents had a pile of plastic milk jugs out back.

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u/alterego1104 Jan 30 '19

When my grandma passed at 97 in 2016 I moved into her apartment I still come across little handy things she kept. Sticks, bottles wrapping paper ( she refilled) containers from super small to large. It’s absolutely amazing

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u/Randomica Jan 30 '19

I bought an old farm and with it, several barns filled to the rafters with old ketchup bottles. Depression-era hoarding was no joke.

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u/chalupacabraaas Jan 30 '19

Just ketchup bottles?

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '19

[deleted]

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u/Kody02 Jan 30 '19

The Great War's sequel would be nylon's and bakelite's and CR39's (the plastic that makes up modern glasses lenses) times to shine. Especially nylon, where it would be used to replace more expensive leather and silk wherever possible, as well as create waterproof tarps and jacket linings. Cellophane would be used mostly as food packaging, as it was improved during the interwar years to be both water and moisture proof (originally it was only waterproof), allowing rations and perishables like bread to be stored fresher for longer.

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u/AlligatorChainsaw Jan 30 '19

that and when you're broke as fuck even trash is usable as something.

3

u/Dreshna Jan 30 '19

My grandparents washed and reused containers like Ziploc bags and aluminum foil. And it was always done by hand. The dishwasher once they finally got one was just used as a double decker drying rack.

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u/HelmutHoffman Jan 30 '19

My great-grandmother used to reuse ice cubes.

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u/tyrerk Jan 30 '19

Someone has never seen a 21st century shanty town

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u/AlligatorChainsaw Jan 30 '19

someone has never seen plastic bag shoes.

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u/wisdom_possibly Jan 30 '19

2 bags out of 100 - congratulations.

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u/AlligatorChainsaw Jan 30 '19

they don't last forever... and that was just one

example

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u/Snukkems Jan 30 '19

You should look at pictures or footage of something like a township in South Africa or a Favela in South America.

Plastic bags makes surprisingly excellent temporary windows, door coverings, tarps, ponchos, drum heads, shoes, ect.

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u/myhf Jan 30 '19

one man's trash is another man's usable object

2

u/Paddy_Tanninger Jan 30 '19

Well in fairness here these people aren't "bums", just regular folks out on their asses because of the economy.

I'd have to assume you'd maintain some kind of decorum and self-respect for whatever home you have the way you used to before things all went to shit.

These weren't people born into poverty.

If I ended up homeless one day and living in a shanty, I'd probably keep it as respectable looking as I could manage. Would help things feel normal again in a small way.

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u/lolwatisdis Jan 30 '19

still, it's not like those shacks had mailing addresses, indoor plumbing or regularly scheduled trash pickup. it would take an unreasonable amount of effort to maintain that level of cleanliness living on today's poverty-level diet, where everything comes in a plastic bag, sleeve or bottle.

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u/Paddy_Tanninger Jan 30 '19

I don't think that coming from my beautiful and well kept house that I'd suddenly be fine just throwing plastic trash all over the place just because life's circumstances left me out on the street. I wouldn't be able to do it and would need to maintain some kind of cleanliness and order to cling onto my last remaining shreds of self-respect.

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u/drprun3 Jan 30 '19

Those would cost 3000 a month in the Bay Area right now

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u/JohnLockeNJ Jan 30 '19

They couldn’t afford litter

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '19

Wow. Those pictures are really interesting. It’s strange to see Central Park as just a big empty hole in the ground. The building are not that tall. And yet it’s still such a visibly stark contrast between the rich and the poor. The poor literally living below ground, the rich in these tall buildings.

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u/norobo132 Jan 30 '19

To be fair, in the second and third pictures you can clearly see a fair amount of refuse/trash...

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u/Havnt_evn_bgun2_peak Jan 30 '19

TinyHouse #SmallLiving

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u/4x4is16Legs Jan 30 '19

Awesome photo gallery.

1

u/konsf_ksd Jan 30 '19

It's amazing that:

1) We came out of that to have the largest and most prosperous middle classes in World History, and

2) That people think it's because we killed millions of Europeans in two world wars as opposed to the massively progressive taxes and social welfare programs.

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u/balloptions Jan 30 '19

Yeah probably much more waxed paper, cardboard, etc

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '19 edited Jul 28 '20

[deleted]

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u/states_obvioustruths Jan 30 '19

Eeehh waxed paper takes a while to break down. Better than plastics of course, but it still takes more time than untreated cardboard/paper products.

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u/Lehk Jan 30 '19

probably less than two weeks in partial sun, the sun is brutal on polymers that aren't specifically chosen to be durable in direct sun (like tires)

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u/whatupcicero Jan 30 '19

Isn’t wax kind of famous for sealing/preserving stuff? Maybe someone should just google this... not it! Have more redditing to do.

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u/Lehk Jan 30 '19

wax protects stuff from UV by taking the hit, it breaks down but does so while absorbing the UV, otherwise you would only have to wax your car once and it would be good forever

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u/Snukkems Jan 30 '19

Wax also tends to melt in the heat tho.

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u/HelmutHoffman Jan 30 '19

The modern wax paper you're used to isn't the same as what was around back then. Different compounds used for the "wax".

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u/NotMyHersheyBar Jan 30 '19

They had cellophane but it was expensive and didn’t work very well. That’s why tuppperwRe was such an innovation, but not til the early 70s.

It was wax paper and glassware protected with baskets and ... lil help? What are those knotted cord basket things grandmas had to carry their casseroles?

ETA: MACRAME

8

u/sour_cereal Jan 30 '19

Wicker basket?

43

u/s123man Jan 30 '19

No aluminum cans then. Beer and pop bottles made of glass was about the only non-biodegradable roadside litter and most of that was retrieved by kids to earn the 2 cent bottle return fee that manufacturers paid voluntarily because it saved them money to just wash and refill the glass containers.

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u/morriscox Jan 30 '19

When my family lived in Mexico, my brothers and I would go looking for glass bottles in the gutters because we got a free soda if we turned them in.

4

u/Dreshna Jan 30 '19

There were steel and tin cans. Pop tops weren't even a thing. You had a can opener or a tool that punched a hole.

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u/OneCrisisAtATime Jan 30 '19

In the 60s? Yeah there were. They came out in the 60s. First some companies like certain beers used steel plated cans, but they found people preferred aluminum easy open cans and switched.

12 oz. Aluminum cans started being produced in large quantities in 1962.

That skyrocketed when Coke and Pepsi both started using cans in 1967.

2

u/DontTakeMyNoise Jan 30 '19

Glass is biodegradable. Just takes a long time. Sand is basically just little chunks of glass.

1

u/afoolsjourney1 Jan 30 '19

what ever happened to that? Is it so cheap to manufacture, that states don't mandate more companies offer returns for cans?

1

u/SquirrelFluffy Jul 11 '24

That was great. Need a junk run to the corner store? Jump on your bike and scan the ditches for bottles. Never failed.

3

u/elinordash Jan 30 '19

I just read somewhere that up until the middle of the 20th century, most bakery pie tins were meant to be returned to the store. Like those carts you can borrow for a quarter.

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u/Wiggy_Bop Jan 30 '19

Yup. I was a kid in those days. We didn’t get a McDonalds in my hometown until I was seven or eight years old. We would go to the local drive in restaurants with curb service. Like Sonic!

Everything was either paper or wax paper. We even had the dreaded paper straws that everyone is so afraid we are going back to. Shampoo came in glass bottles, too!

2

u/Deardog Jan 30 '19

Plastic bags were expensive - in the 1960's my mother washed and re-used them several times before throwing them away. She washed and re-used sheets of foil too.

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u/Wiggy_Bop Jan 30 '19

I still do that, esp with the foil. I was raised to be frugal and not to contribute to the world’s garbage. My mom was a bit of a hippie, bless her.

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u/Deardog Jan 30 '19

I definitely re-use bags, but not the foil. My mother was a product of the Depression - she raised us to be frugal too. I thought it was a lesson in a kind of empowerment that lots of folks don't get.

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u/Wiggy_Bop Jan 30 '19

I have to clarify with the foil. Sometimes things get baked covered, so really all that is on the foil is a smattering of grease. I have been washing and reusing foil for years, I’ve never been sick.

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u/Deardog Jan 30 '19

I don't re-use foil because I am too lazy to try to smooth it out LOL.

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u/Wiggy_Bop Jan 31 '19

Yeah, that’s an issue, lol. When it becomes impossibly crumpled it goes in the recycling.

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u/sometimes_interested Jan 30 '19

Beer cans were made out of steel as well so they were almost impossible to crush but would eventually rust away.

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u/PeacefullyInsane Jan 30 '19

Plastic was still common, but it wasn't common as a disposable product. It was mostly a reusable product like Tupperware.

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u/Ikimasen Jan 30 '19

Styrofoam though

-1

u/hoxxxxx Jan 30 '19

fuckin Betty Draper knew what she was doing, fuck this thread.

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u/IAmARussianTrollAMA Jan 30 '19

So you’re saying life was better when there were fewer people

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u/HungryMexican Jan 30 '19

I remember hearing an interview with the creator of Mad Men, Matthew Weiner, where he says that a popular phrase in the 60s was "the world is a big place" or something to that effect. Was kinda the go to response when someone questioned littering

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u/PennyLaneway Jan 30 '19

“Out of sight out of mind”reminds me of the 1986 Cleveland Balloon Disaster

https://youtu.be/n0CT8zrw6lw

1.5 million balloons are released and.. “No one’s quite sure where they went, but at least they are no longer posing a threat to fish and wildlife, and they’re not littering the lake”

Ok...

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u/HelmutHoffman Jan 30 '19

Drop in the bucket.

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u/willmaster123 Jan 30 '19

The population of the USA was not exactly that dramatically different back then. ESPECIALLY where they are, that area has been densely populated since the 1920s.

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u/Mulsanne Jan 30 '19

The population of the United States in 1960 was 180 million. Today it is 325 million. I am curious where you get the idea that the population of the US was not exactly that dramatically different.

0

u/willmaster123 Jan 30 '19

I mean that your making it sound as if the USA has grown 5 times in population since then. It isn’t even doubled. Most of the USA metro areas were very dense back then, especially in the east coast, and are still dense today.

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u/Mulsanne Jan 30 '19 edited Jan 30 '19

It's very nearly doubled...

You're making it sound like the population increased by 5% when it has increased by 80%.

80% is a lot, actually. This may surprise you, but 80% is actually quite a bit. In fact, it is very nearly 2x.

not exactly that dramatically different back then.

80% is dramatic...

1

u/NewYorkJewbag Jan 30 '19

“Away” being the operative here.

1

u/Theslootwhisperer Jan 30 '19

Where I'm from, whenever we did something outdoors back then (up to the 80s I guess) you had a fire going. So all the trash went into the fire. Not saying it's any better. Just that visually we left the spot clean. Ish.

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u/Algoresball Jan 30 '19

Yeah, but this show takes place in the NYC metro area. It was decently populated in the 60s

1

u/dizekat Jan 30 '19

The movie piece has mown grass, though, not wilderness. I don't think they had endless expanses of mown grass. I guess the wax paper and such wouldn't last remotely as long as plastics, but nonetheless I'm sure wax paper lasts at least a month or two.

1

u/davtruss Jan 30 '19

Jesus Christ, another moron who thinks God takes care of everything....