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Littering: Not Cool · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Jerry's here, and this is stuff
0:15
Speaker 1: you should know that you already headed right towards something
0:22
Speaker 1: brilliant that it's all you stop yourself. I yeah, I
0:26
Speaker 1: didn't have anything, so I just just let it die
0:29
Speaker 1: right there on the still in front of everybody. Hey,
0:33
Speaker 1: before we get going, we want to plug a couple
0:35
Speaker 1: of podcasts from our colleagues. I had a hand in
0:40
Speaker 1: both of these. Nice congrats. Sure, I think it's probably
0:45
Speaker 1: the last thing I'll have a hand in. Ever. Why
0:47
Speaker 1: is that? Are you dying? No, I mean we're all dying. Uh,
0:52
Speaker 1: nothing imminent, but I don't know. The door, you know,
0:55
Speaker 1: doesn't often knock for voice acting, although you never can tell,
1:00
Speaker 1: but I did a piece of voice acting for Lethal
1:04
Speaker 1: Lit season two premiere. And if you if you don't
1:09
Speaker 1: know what Lethal Lit is, it is, Uh, technically it's
1:12
Speaker 1: called Lethal Lit colin a tig Tours Mystery season two
1:16
Speaker 1: and it just debuted yesterday. Season two did, But it is.
1:20
Speaker 1: It's great. It's like a sort of an old school
1:23
Speaker 1: Nancy Drew Detective Team detective type of thing, but modernized,
1:27
Speaker 1: got a little more punch, but you know, it's still
1:29
Speaker 1: family friendly. A little more punch of seen, a little
1:31
Speaker 1: more bite with the emphasis, Um, it's really great. Yeah,
1:36
Speaker 1: So it is, like it's the kind of thing from
1:38
Speaker 1: what I understand that like adults can enjoy, but it's
1:41
Speaker 1: it's also geared towards like younger listeners to right. Yeah,
1:45
Speaker 1: I mean they say it's like Nancy Drew for scream fans. Uh.
1:49
Speaker 1: But the people who make it are awesome. And Heather
1:53
Speaker 1: iron Horn created it a couple of years ago when
1:55
Speaker 1: I was still doing like development stuff. I met with
1:58
Speaker 1: her and she rang me up a couple of years
2:00
Speaker 1: later and said, hey, how about doing a piece of
2:03
Speaker 1: voice acting for the season premiere season two? And I did,
2:07
Speaker 1: and it was so much fun. I got to like
2:09
Speaker 1: really get a juicy character acting type of things. I
2:13
Speaker 1: can't wait to hear it. Chuck, I'm not just playing me.
2:16
Speaker 1: That's great. Even when you played you, I thought you
2:19
Speaker 1: did a good job. You're a much better actor than
2:22
Speaker 1: you give yourself credit for. This was a lot of fun.
2:24
Speaker 1: Though I wish I could do more of this kind
2:26
Speaker 1: of stuff, but I just I don't like pursue it.
2:28
Speaker 1: But anyway, it was a lot of fun. So you
2:30
Speaker 1: can hear me in season episode one of season two,
2:33
Speaker 1: which is out now on the I Heart Network. And
2:36
Speaker 1: then our buddy Joe Randazzo has a new show that's out.
2:39
Speaker 1: Didn't didn't he tell him the name? Uh? Dr sex Reese.
2:45
Speaker 1: It is not family friendly. No, you could have just
2:49
Speaker 1: said Joe Randazzo and that that would have gotten that across.
2:52
Speaker 1: Not family family guy. He is one of the great
2:55
Speaker 1: comedic geniuses of our time, but he's not family friendly. No, no,
3:01
Speaker 1: So it's it's a blue comedy. It's very, very funny,
3:04
Speaker 1: but you don't want your kids listening. But it is
3:06
Speaker 1: about a Colin show is a sex therapist who has
3:10
Speaker 1: never had intercourse. And that's kind of all you need
3:13
Speaker 1: to say. And it's Joe, so yeah, it's great. I
3:16
Speaker 1: mean you had me at Joe Randazzo, so yeah, And
3:19
Speaker 1: that's out now too, right, Uh, it's already out. And
3:23
Speaker 1: I don't think I ever mentioned in lieu of listener mail.
3:25
Speaker 1: One week, I was going to mention it, but I forgot.
3:27
Speaker 1: Remember when I said I wasn't very into Calvin and
3:29
Speaker 1: Calvin and Hobbs like I never read it. He He
3:33
Speaker 1: left me a voicemail driving with his three children where
3:37
Speaker 1: they sounded like a fire torch wielding angry mob screaming
3:42
Speaker 1: at me about not getting into Calvin and Hobbs. I'm
3:47
Speaker 1: gonna cheer it with you. It's very funny, like his
3:49
Speaker 1: kids sound like. It's like Lord of the Flies level upset.
3:53
Speaker 1: It's awesome. His kids are chuck. It's really funny. But anyway,
4:00
Speaker 1: Dr Sex Race is already out. Uh and then Lethal
4:04
Speaker 1: It It it Tick towards Mystery. Season two dropped yesterday. Well,
4:07
Speaker 1: congratulations to everybody. Congratulations I think most of all to
4:10
Speaker 1: you though for appearing on Lethal Lit. It was fun.
4:15
Speaker 1: I wish I could voice act a lot. I have
4:19
Speaker 1: a feeling you're gonna get a lot more requests starting now.
4:23
Speaker 1: We'll see people be like, who was who was that guy?
4:26
Speaker 1: I'm not going to reveal anything about it, but okay.
4:30
Speaker 1: I did a very small part on squid Billies a
4:32
Speaker 1: few years ago. It was never released with me. Yeah,
4:37
Speaker 1: that's like our kiss of death. When you have us
4:39
Speaker 1: on your talk show, it gets canceled. It within a month. Now,
4:43
Speaker 1: it wasn't canceled. It was I think I think I
4:45
Speaker 1: think our friend Dave willis replace me. I don't think
4:48
Speaker 1: I was very good and that one, at least he
4:51
Speaker 1: did it quietly. I never followed up with him. I
4:55
Speaker 1: should have asked, but I was ready to go in
4:56
Speaker 1: there and do some good like redneck voice, because I
5:00
Speaker 1: do some good ones. And he said, he's like, no,
5:02
Speaker 1: just once, You're just gonna be you. And I went, oh, Dave,
5:07
Speaker 1: you just gave me a soda pop and sent me
5:09
Speaker 1: on my way. Oh you got a free soda pop. Fun.
5:12
Speaker 1: We love Dave and Squidbillizo so no, no shade there. Okay,
5:16
Speaker 1: so welcome to the podcast for everybody. Just fast forwarded
5:19
Speaker 1: through all that and got to the market where we
5:21
Speaker 1: started about littering. How about that? Yeah, And this one
5:26
Speaker 1: was one of my picks, and I very simply thought
5:28
Speaker 1: of it recently because I was driving down the road
5:30
Speaker 1: and two and saw a fully grown adult human throw
5:36
Speaker 1: a bag of trash out their window, followed by a
5:39
Speaker 1: cup of fast food soda filled with dip spit, so
5:43
Speaker 1: two different throws out of the car, and I just thought,
5:47
Speaker 1: my god, who does that? And uh, let's let's see
5:50
Speaker 1: if we can find out. And you ran them off
5:52
Speaker 1: the road. No, I was just so upset though. It's
5:55
Speaker 1: just so weird to see. I'm really really working on
6:00
Speaker 1: letting things trigger or flood me in starting in year finally.
6:06
Speaker 1: And uh, I'm very curious how how well I would
6:10
Speaker 1: deal with actually seeing that, Like I'm doing okay hearing
6:12
Speaker 1: about it right now, Like I'm a little jazzed right now,
6:14
Speaker 1: but I got it under control. Actually seeing it, I
6:18
Speaker 1: don't know how well I could contain myself. I was
6:22
Speaker 1: ticked off, but it's um, I try to let things
6:24
Speaker 1: go quicker, so it's not like hours later, I was
6:27
Speaker 1: still like, Ah, that guy. That's good. You know that's good. Yeah,
6:30
Speaker 1: that's because you know what. You can't change that guy. No,
6:33
Speaker 1: you can't. You can just run him off the road. Yeah,
6:36
Speaker 1: or find them if you're a government sure. I mean,
6:40
Speaker 1: if you had tried to find him, he probably would
6:42
Speaker 1: have laughed in your face. Although I'm saying he it's
6:46
Speaker 1: just as possible. It turns out, Chuck, at least if
6:48
Speaker 1: this had happened in two thousand nine, that it could
6:50
Speaker 1: have been she too. Huh. Yes, statistically speaking, that is true.
6:54
Speaker 1: But I saw this guy's ugly face. I'll bet he
6:57
Speaker 1: was so ugly and stupid. I bet his whole family
7:00
Speaker 1: was so stupid. Yeah, I've been so mad if he
7:02
Speaker 1: was handsome, handsome, smart people don't litter typically unless they're
7:08
Speaker 1: Don Draper. All right, let's do this litter right. Yeah.
7:15
Speaker 1: I think it was a good pick. One of the
7:17
Speaker 1: things that I love about this episode is it's kind
7:19
Speaker 1: of mind bending. Um. One of those bern Asian surprises
7:24
Speaker 1: is firmed wedged firmly inside this episode's topic. M M,
7:30
Speaker 1: don't you think I'm sure? I know what you mean?
7:32
Speaker 1: Oh sure, I do. Okay. I was like, oh god,
7:35
Speaker 1: that's like four pages of this stuff. No, no, no,
7:38
Speaker 1: you may I just I forgot who Bernese was. I
7:40
Speaker 1: was thinking about the sauce. You're like, it sounds good
7:44
Speaker 1: but confusing. Uh should we start with the word yeah,
7:49
Speaker 1: let's I thought that was a good place to also
7:51
Speaker 1: shout out to Dave Ruse for helping us out with
7:52
Speaker 1: us as always as ever, so, the word litter with
7:58
Speaker 1: one T came from old friend to Middle English meant
8:01
Speaker 1: a bed with two teas. It was like a portable
8:05
Speaker 1: bed that if you were like a king or somebody,
8:07
Speaker 1: you could travel around on one of these and I
8:09
Speaker 1: guess that's where a rescue litter comes from. Okay, I thought,
8:14
Speaker 1: because I've always thought that was such a weird word
8:15
Speaker 1: for it. It is very weird. It doesn't really make
8:18
Speaker 1: any sense. But the use of the word bed for
8:21
Speaker 1: litter makes much more sense because it comes from our
8:25
Speaker 1: friends down on the farm. Yeah, our farm, our farmer friends.
8:33
Speaker 1: You mean you're talking about scattering hey. Yeah, Like if
8:36
Speaker 1: you if you scatter hey for an animal to sleep on,
8:38
Speaker 1: particularly like livestock or something like that, you would call
8:42
Speaker 1: that their litter. And there you have it. That's where
8:46
Speaker 1: it comes from, Like littering food out of your car,
8:48
Speaker 1: derived initially from being a kind farmer and scattering hey
8:52
Speaker 1: for your little goats. Yeah. Because along the way, somebody
8:54
Speaker 1: equated like scattering stuff on the ground that you wouldn't
8:58
Speaker 1: normally want on the ground with people throwing their trash
9:01
Speaker 1: on the ground, and so litter became used as litter.
9:04
Speaker 1: What surprised me is that, um that this started way
9:08
Speaker 1: back in the eighteenth century. I would have thought it
9:11
Speaker 1: was a much more recent phenomenon, but no, it isn't. Yeah.
9:15
Speaker 1: Day found a uh something from a novel in reference
9:21
Speaker 1: to the word litter as litter. If she is cutting
9:23
Speaker 1: a piece of gauze or paper, she's sure to make
9:25
Speaker 1: a litter all over the room. Yeah, it's like a mess.
9:29
Speaker 1: It was a literary reference to litter, so that's where
9:34
Speaker 1: the word later came from. And I'd love one. I'd
9:36
Speaker 1: love I like the stories of the etymologies where there's
9:40
Speaker 1: some really great theories because nobody quite knows, but I
9:43
Speaker 1: find those less satisfying than the ones where it's like
9:46
Speaker 1: here it is, here's your answer, fish Bolb. Yeah. Uh,
9:52
Speaker 1: littering was not as big of a deal here in
9:55
Speaker 1: the United States, and I imagine in other parts of
9:57
Speaker 1: the world, but we're talking mainly about the US with
9:59
Speaker 1: these sta uts, but until the fifties and sixties, because
10:04
Speaker 1: we were generally a culture of reusing things and there
10:07
Speaker 1: were not nearly as many disposable things. Uh, a lot
10:11
Speaker 1: of glass and you know, Emily talks about her grandparents
10:15
Speaker 1: in Middle Ohio in the nineteen forties and fifties and
10:19
Speaker 1: they re used a lot of stuff. And it wasn't
10:23
Speaker 1: it wasn't like because of a green movement. It was
10:25
Speaker 1: just like people reuse stuff. Things cost money, and if
10:28
Speaker 1: you weren't like wealthy, you reuse things. Yeah, I mean
10:32
Speaker 1: that was even if you were wealthy, you typically reuse things.
10:35
Speaker 1: Like if you got milk, you would leave your empty
10:38
Speaker 1: milk bottles out and the milkman would come along and
10:41
Speaker 1: replace the empty bottles with filled up bottles, and it
10:44
Speaker 1: would take those other bottles, clean them and reuse them.
10:47
Speaker 1: Like that was just how you got milk. Whether you
10:49
Speaker 1: were wealthy or poverty stricken didn't matter, And that was
10:52
Speaker 1: just the way that society was up until the post
10:56
Speaker 1: World War two economic boom, where um, thanks to a
10:59
Speaker 1: lot of technology that we developed during the war, all
11:03
Speaker 1: of a sudden, we had packaging that we could produce
11:06
Speaker 1: really cheaply and really efficiently, and no way to make
11:11
Speaker 1: a bunch of money off of them off of it
11:14
Speaker 1: until some enterprising I guess beverage companies and and um
11:18
Speaker 1: disposable packaging companies got together and said, we've got to
11:22
Speaker 1: figure this out, because there's a lot of a lot
11:25
Speaker 1: of money being lost by this deeply inefficient reuse economy
11:29
Speaker 1: that we've got. Yeah, and I know I've mentioned this
11:33
Speaker 1: once before, but I'm just fifty years old, and I
11:36
Speaker 1: actually I mean, we could get milk in the store,
11:39
Speaker 1: but we also occasionally would go to a dairy nearby
11:42
Speaker 1: and bring milk bottles. It wasn't in the milkman coming
11:45
Speaker 1: to your house, but we would go to a dairy
11:47
Speaker 1: and pull up and get our milk exchanged. Uh. And
11:50
Speaker 1: the other relic from the seventies that you probably remember too,
11:53
Speaker 1: that you know, younger listeners might be shocked to here
11:57
Speaker 1: is the Charles chips. Dude, Oh that we got canister chips. Yeah.
12:03
Speaker 1: We You would get potato chips Charles Chips delivered and
12:07
Speaker 1: you would give them your big you know, it's like
12:10
Speaker 1: a big metal tin full of potato chips. And it
12:14
Speaker 1: wasn't like, oh it was a tin with a bunch
12:15
Speaker 1: of bags of little chips. No, it was full of
12:18
Speaker 1: potato chips and you would get your potato chips delivery.
12:21
Speaker 1: It's crazy to think about. We we never had that.
12:23
Speaker 1: I remember the Schwann's delivery person. And then prior to
12:31
Speaker 1: if you want to bottle water, it meant that somebody
12:32
Speaker 1: showed up at your house with like a five or
12:34
Speaker 1: ten gallon jug of water and you had a little
12:37
Speaker 1: water dispenser that was bottled water before and those were
12:40
Speaker 1: all reusable. Yeah, we'll probably speak ill of single use
12:44
Speaker 1: of plastic bottles of water. Well, I think you should.
12:47
Speaker 1: I think anybody, any sensible person sees the disposable packaging
12:53
Speaker 1: that that um really kind of drives a lot of
12:56
Speaker 1: our our economy and a lot of the products that
12:59
Speaker 1: we buy as really problematic. And litters just one aspect
13:03
Speaker 1: of it, but it's a pretty big aspect of it.
13:05
Speaker 1: But I think what we're saying here in total to
13:08
Speaker 1: begin is that litters actually a fairly recent phenomenon, starting
13:12
Speaker 1: in maybe the fifties, the nineteen fifties. Yeah. And Dave
13:16
Speaker 1: also points out that not only were we reusing things
13:19
Speaker 1: and just not having as many disposable items, but there
13:23
Speaker 1: weren't trash cans all over the place back then either
13:26
Speaker 1: like there are now. And there weren't signs that say, hey,
13:30
Speaker 1: you know, it's weird to throw stuff just on the
13:33
Speaker 1: ground when you leave. Uh. And he he did reference
13:36
Speaker 1: a Madman episode, which is very funny. I remember when
13:40
Speaker 1: it happened. The drapers are on a picnic, and they
13:42
Speaker 1: got up afterward and done through his spear bottle in
13:45
Speaker 1: the woods, and Betty shook the litter off the blanket
13:50
Speaker 1: onto the grass in the park and then they got
13:52
Speaker 1: in their car it's hysterical and just leave it there. Yeah.
13:54
Speaker 1: The one that always gets me is the anchorman thing
13:56
Speaker 1: where they're all eating McDonald's and walking and they just
13:58
Speaker 1: all throw their track. Yeah, yeah, I mean it was
14:01
Speaker 1: there was a time when that was. I don't know
14:04
Speaker 1: if it was ever acceptable, but it was certainly not
14:07
Speaker 1: like it is now. As far as you know, you
14:09
Speaker 1: were like shunned, not frowned upon. But it didn't take
14:12
Speaker 1: very long for people to say, like this is this
14:15
Speaker 1: is objectively ugly, like even if you you were not
14:18
Speaker 1: taking the environment into account, which they certainly weren't at first,
14:21
Speaker 1: but in like the fifties and sixties, there were still
14:23
Speaker 1: people that were like it, this looks terrible. And they
14:27
Speaker 1: were even like farmers apparently in Vermont were complaining that
14:31
Speaker 1: people are just throwing their glass bottles out the out
14:33
Speaker 1: the window. Because, by the way, even though you could
14:35
Speaker 1: still reuse some of the stuff, the the companies producing
14:40
Speaker 1: these um these um goods that were in like disposable packaging,
14:45
Speaker 1: they were they were encouraging people to just throw this away.
14:48
Speaker 1: Like there were there was um oh, what's the name
14:51
Speaker 1: of that podcast or that MPR show through Line. They
14:57
Speaker 1: did a really great episode on on what we're talking
14:59
Speaker 1: about here, the development of teaching people to throw stuff away.
15:04
Speaker 1: There were actual like ads and commercials and p s.
15:07
Speaker 1: A s that taught people like, Okay, when you're done
15:10
Speaker 1: with this, just throw it away. You don't have to
15:13
Speaker 1: figure out a way to reuse it or wash it out,
15:15
Speaker 1: or you can just throw it away. And like people
15:17
Speaker 1: had to be taught that, which kind of goes to
15:20
Speaker 1: show how unnatural the whole thing is. But but my
15:23
Speaker 1: point is that even at the time, chuck um, there
15:26
Speaker 1: were people who had problems with littering from the outset,
15:29
Speaker 1: even if it wasn't like a massive thing at that point,
15:33
Speaker 1: like a society wide issue. Yeah, and God bless Vermonters. Uh.
15:39
Speaker 1: You mentioned the farmers there with a broken glass for
15:42
Speaker 1: their cows. But they sponsored and got past the first
15:46
Speaker 1: what would be known as bottle bills. Uh when in
15:50
Speaker 1: three they banned throwaway bottles. And this is where you
15:55
Speaker 1: know the writing was on the wall for the beverage
15:58
Speaker 1: industry in particular, was like, oh, you know, Vermont, they're
16:02
Speaker 1: a bunch of hippies. Sure, but we can't let this
16:04
Speaker 1: catch on and get our product band, we'll be in
16:09
Speaker 1: big trouble, and I guess we'll take a break maybe
16:13
Speaker 1: because that's a great cliffhanger and dive into our barn
16:16
Speaker 1: Asian nightmare. Right, let's do it, all right, we'll be
16:19
Speaker 1: right back. Well, now we're on the road, driving in
16:23
Speaker 1: your truck. Want to learn a thing or two from
16:27
Speaker 1: Josh Damp Chuck gets stuff you should know. All right,
16:51
Speaker 1: So we were entering that barn Asian nightmare. Now, Chuck,
16:54
Speaker 1: it's like a giant Goya painting of corporate interests. This
16:59
Speaker 1: one's tricky because it is a Bernasian nightmare and we're
17:02
Speaker 1: talking about the creation of Keep America Beautiful. Uh, but
17:08
Speaker 1: it it all like I have very mixed feelings because
17:11
Speaker 1: the whole thing with Keep America Beautiful is is a
17:15
Speaker 1: lot of big beverage companies got together, Dixie Cup, Coca Cola, Owens,
17:20
Speaker 1: Illinois Glass Company, American Can Company, and they said, all right,
17:24
Speaker 1: we gotta fight these bottle bills. Um. And the way
17:28
Speaker 1: we're gonna do it is through a pr spin to
17:30
Speaker 1: tell everybody that it's their responsibility to not litter. And
17:37
Speaker 1: in a way it's sort of an evil plan, but
17:40
Speaker 1: in another way, I'm like, yeah, you should be individually
17:43
Speaker 1: responsible to not do that. But then also beverage companies
17:48
Speaker 1: also have a responsibility that they completely shirt, So I
17:51
Speaker 1: get it. But I also think people have a personal responsibility,
17:54
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. I I think that's a
17:57
Speaker 1: very sensible way of looking at it, because I agree
18:00
Speaker 1: with it fully, Like, yes, Like, there's nothing wrong with
18:04
Speaker 1: them coming up with keep America beautiful and teaching people
18:07
Speaker 1: to not litter, and then in conjunction with that, actually
18:11
Speaker 1: putting those garbage cans out and putting you know, creating
18:14
Speaker 1: like a public service campaign that taught people like, don't
18:17
Speaker 1: be a litter bug. If you if you litter, your unpatriotic.
18:21
Speaker 1: They basically used every angle they could think of. The
18:24
Speaker 1: problem with it that everybody has an issue with. Once
18:27
Speaker 1: you find out about this is that it was the motivation,
18:30
Speaker 1: the intent behind it. It wasn't too to beautify America.
18:35
Speaker 1: It was to keep the train, this disposable packaging train
18:39
Speaker 1: going right, Like, hey, everybody stopped throwing the stuff on
18:42
Speaker 1: the ground or else we're not going to be able
18:44
Speaker 1: to make this anymore. But even more than that, they
18:47
Speaker 1: took the they took the spotlight off of the question
18:51
Speaker 1: why is there so much disposable packaging to begin with?
18:54
Speaker 1: Why don't we go back to reusable stuff that was working.
18:57
Speaker 1: And these companies are like, no, no, no, we we
18:59
Speaker 1: are make fifty times more money with this disposable stuff
19:02
Speaker 1: because you guys are buying way more and then um,
19:06
Speaker 1: and then it put the spotlight onto the individual person.
19:10
Speaker 1: It said, it's your responsibility stop asking about disposable packaging
19:13
Speaker 1: and just start focusing on your civic duty to not wither. Yeah,
19:18
Speaker 1: and you sent me an article that had an interesting
19:20
Speaker 1: bit that and we'll cover some more stuff in this
19:22
Speaker 1: time period. But by the early seventies, some more of
19:26
Speaker 1: these bottle bills, Uh, we're happening. And they weren't so
19:29
Speaker 1: much banning things, but it was like, hey, let's incentivize
19:32
Speaker 1: people to come back and turn in their knee high
19:35
Speaker 1: grade bottle for five cents, which also remember doing when
19:38
Speaker 1: I was a kid. Uh. And in nineteen seventy four,
19:42
Speaker 1: California was considering a bottle bill, and Keep America Beautiful
19:47
Speaker 1: was like, whoa, this is big time because that's a
19:50
Speaker 1: huge economy out there. And they actually publicly opposed the
19:55
Speaker 1: measure for the first time, and there was a leaked
19:58
Speaker 1: story about the chairman the American can Company, William F. May,
20:02
Speaker 1: called bottle bill supporters communists, And this is when the
20:07
Speaker 1: e p A pulled out and a bunch of environmental
20:10
Speaker 1: groups pulled out of Keep America Beautiful. And we're like, oh,
20:14
Speaker 1: that's like the light was kind of shining on them
20:17
Speaker 1: for the first time. Yeah, that that like, oh, these
20:20
Speaker 1: guys aren't really you know, environmentally conscious. There's this is
20:25
Speaker 1: strictly greenwashing for them. It was the first greenwashing attempt
20:29
Speaker 1: and it was super successful too. Yeah. They spent fourteen
20:32
Speaker 1: million dollars over a five year span in the early
20:35
Speaker 1: nineties to defeat a national bottle bill. So Keep America
20:39
Speaker 1: Beautiful does some great work, but it's you know, you
20:42
Speaker 1: gotta know what goes on behind this stuff. You know.
20:45
Speaker 1: That's absolutely true. And that's good that they are doing
20:47
Speaker 1: good work because they are basically the sole source for
20:52
Speaker 1: data about littering in America at very least, they're the
20:57
Speaker 1: most robust source. But as Dave puts it, um it's
21:01
Speaker 1: bankrolled by corporate interests. But the people conducting these these
21:06
Speaker 1: um these studies are actually like environmental engineers and their
21:10
Speaker 1: disinterested bodies insofar as you know, they're still scientists although
21:15
Speaker 1: they're being paid, like they're not cooking the books. No,
21:18
Speaker 1: And you know, I mean like yeah, it's it's a
21:21
Speaker 1: very like I'm just writhing right here. I can't. I
21:25
Speaker 1: just want this to be clear, like should I hate
21:27
Speaker 1: keep America beautiful or not? But um, but but I
21:30
Speaker 1: don't because they are They have had a huge effect
21:35
Speaker 1: on littering, demonstrably a big effect on on reducing littering
21:39
Speaker 1: and teaching people not to litter. It's just again for
21:42
Speaker 1: their bottom lines, that's the problem. And they are still
21:45
Speaker 1: the number one largest anti litter organization on planet Earth.
21:50
Speaker 1: So there's something to be said for that. Uh. And
21:53
Speaker 1: they've had many ways to get their message out there
21:55
Speaker 1: over the years. I think their first little mascot was
21:59
Speaker 1: Susan Spotless, who talked about who shamed litter bugs early on? Uh.
22:05
Speaker 1: And then you know, we don't remember what episode, but
22:07
Speaker 1: very on and stuff early on and stuff. You should
22:10
Speaker 1: know we talked about the what it was known at
22:13
Speaker 1: the time, the crying Indian p s A. Do you
22:16
Speaker 1: remember why we would have talked about that? M I don't.
22:23
Speaker 1: Years ago, I cannot, I have no idea why that
22:26
Speaker 1: would have come up? Well, what was the deal with that?
22:28
Speaker 1: It was sort of fake on many fronts, right, it was.
22:31
Speaker 1: I mean one of the big things was that Ironized Cody,
22:34
Speaker 1: who was known for a while as America's favorite Indian,
22:39
Speaker 1: was not Native American by any way, shape or form.
22:41
Speaker 1: He was actually a Sicilian American um actor. Oh, that's
22:48
Speaker 1: a big one that people definitely at the time didn't
22:50
Speaker 1: know um. And that was problematic not just because this
22:54
Speaker 1: guy was Sicilian um, but that also the Native American
22:59
Speaker 1: that is being used in this ad, the very image
23:02
Speaker 1: of the Native American was was just totally co opted
23:06
Speaker 1: by this corporate group to again shame you into not
23:11
Speaker 1: littering too, for you to feel bad, not them to
23:14
Speaker 1: feel bad, for you to feel bad for littering. Um.
23:17
Speaker 1: And it it also the the other thing that I
23:19
Speaker 1: saw that was a big critique of is that if
23:20
Speaker 1: you'll notice, like the Native American Ironized Cody um or
23:25
Speaker 1: the character doesn't speak, he's spoken for by a narrator
23:30
Speaker 1: um and so he's he stands mute, which I saw
23:32
Speaker 1: as a testament to his powerlessness. Yeah, I mean, if
23:37
Speaker 1: you don't know what we mean that you can find
23:38
Speaker 1: it on YouTube. Still, it was a minute long commercial
23:42
Speaker 1: where it showed this Native American in full you know,
23:46
Speaker 1: sort of traditional garb paddling a traditional Native American canoe
23:51
Speaker 1: through what looked like the Kyoga River in Ohio. I
23:53
Speaker 1: know it wasn't there, but it couldn't have been any
23:55
Speaker 1: more industrial with this sort of we're chant kind of
24:00
Speaker 1: music playing in the background. It was kind of wrong
24:04
Speaker 1: in many levels, you know, through today's lens. But you know,
24:07
Speaker 1: he's getting more sad as he sees how poorly the
24:10
Speaker 1: water is treated in the shore line. And then he
24:14
Speaker 1: finally gets out and a bag of fast food is
24:19
Speaker 1: tossed from a car and explodes at his feet with
24:22
Speaker 1: seemingly an entire order for like a family of five
24:26
Speaker 1: a fast food. It's so much food, it's like did
24:29
Speaker 1: theyn't eat anything out of that back? And then in
24:32
Speaker 1: a single tier once you see his face, Yeah, they
24:35
Speaker 1: pan up and and his face is there and it's
24:37
Speaker 1: he's crying, which may have been faked as well, right, Yeah,
24:41
Speaker 1: I think it was a glycerin concoction. Yeah, so um, yeah,
24:45
Speaker 1: what's what's not great under today's in today's view was
24:49
Speaker 1: like award winning and groundbreaking back in nine when the
24:53
Speaker 1: ad came out and it had an effect. It had
24:55
Speaker 1: a huge effect. The the AGG Council, who I helped
25:00
Speaker 1: reduced that p s A apparently had to send out
25:02
Speaker 1: replacement reels because the original ones were getting worn out
25:05
Speaker 1: because they're being played so often. As the long standing
25:08
Speaker 1: anecdote goes, but if you're yeah, yeah, I can't remember
25:14
Speaker 1: the last time I saw it, but I definitely saw
25:16
Speaker 1: it on TV at some point, as you know, a
25:19
Speaker 1: cognizant person, you know, right, And so it was created
25:23
Speaker 1: in seventy one, and it was I remember seeing it
25:25
Speaker 1: throughout the nineteen seventies. So if and if you're like,
25:30
Speaker 1: was it really effective, stop and ask yourself if you
25:32
Speaker 1: feel guilty at the thought of littering or at the
25:35
Speaker 1: act of littering itself, And if your answers yes, it's
25:38
Speaker 1: because the Keep America Beautiful group did a really good
25:42
Speaker 1: job putting the personal responsibility of not littering onto us. Yeah,
25:48
Speaker 1: which again it does make sense that like, uh, it's
25:51
Speaker 1: just a shame it couldn't have been sort of a
25:53
Speaker 1: hand in hand type of approach, right. The Park Service
25:56
Speaker 1: also got into it too. Chuck with um Woodsy the Owl.
25:59
Speaker 1: Did you see that that that clip I sent you
26:02
Speaker 1: the ad? Yeah? I used to love Woodsy. Sure, how
26:05
Speaker 1: could you not give a hoot? Don't pollut? Yeah, I
26:07
Speaker 1: got a wood see sign at my camp. Oh that's cute. Yeah.
26:11
Speaker 1: I like the seventies version. Have you seen the updated version?
26:16
Speaker 1: I don't think so. He's kind of buff. He looks
26:18
Speaker 1: like he could beat you up. He's almost like buff
26:20
Speaker 1: in the way that Ned Flanders is buff, like a
26:23
Speaker 1: wholesome buffness, that strangely menacing, weird a buff owl. Yeah, yeah, great,
26:30
Speaker 1: great point. The other thing that keep America Beautiful was
26:33
Speaker 1: successful at was lobbying for litter laws. Uh and so Nino.
26:38
Speaker 1: Now there are all kinds of fines for both littering
26:41
Speaker 1: and the most reprehensible kind of littering, which is dumping. Um.
26:46
Speaker 1: One of my favorite bands of all time, Granddaddy, has
26:48
Speaker 1: a song called Broken Household Appliance National Forest, where Jason
26:54
Speaker 1: Little is a big outdoorsy guy and he their lyrics
26:58
Speaker 1: are about like, you know, a forest just littered with
27:01
Speaker 1: with appliances and animals living in them and uh and
27:04
Speaker 1: it's not like it is obviously admonishing tongue in cheek,
27:07
Speaker 1: but he's sort of like, you know, it's got a
27:09
Speaker 1: nice a nice home for a bunny instead of an
27:11
Speaker 1: oven door, and you know that kind of thing. But
27:14
Speaker 1: dumping is just there. There's a spot in my neighborhood
27:17
Speaker 1: where people will still dump stuff. Uh you know, it's
27:21
Speaker 1: like if you find a spot of woods with a creek,
27:22
Speaker 1: like you might find a couch in there one day.
27:24
Speaker 1: It's awful, right, that's dumping. It's usually it's either like
27:30
Speaker 1: five pounds is usually the standard, or a certain size
27:34
Speaker 1: like so many cubic feet or something like that. But
27:36
Speaker 1: it's like trash trash plus basically. And that's the ones
27:40
Speaker 1: where like you can get a really big fine or
27:43
Speaker 1: even jail time. I think a Tennessee you can get
27:46
Speaker 1: up to six years for dumping. Um And in most
27:49
Speaker 1: states if you dump for commercial purposes, like you're a
27:53
Speaker 1: junk hauler and you go dump in the woods, no
27:56
Speaker 1: matter how much or how little you dump, you can
27:59
Speaker 1: get jail time for that. And I'm pretty stiff fine.
28:01
Speaker 1: I think in Maryland it's like thirty dollars, and of
28:04
Speaker 1: course it should be that way. Um. The problem is
28:07
Speaker 1: is like the the I think the fine for littering
28:12
Speaker 1: is either not enough to deter people who do litter still,
28:17
Speaker 1: or it's unevenly applied apparently, like like jaywalking. Remember we
28:21
Speaker 1: talked about in the short Stuff episode that jaywalking tickets
28:24
Speaker 1: are not not distributed equally among the races in America. Yeah,
28:28
Speaker 1: same deal with the littering, right, Yeah, same thing. So, uh,
28:34
Speaker 1: they can take your driver's license. If you litter from
28:37
Speaker 1: a car in certain states, you can have your vehicle
28:40
Speaker 1: taken away. I think that's only for dumping, not like
28:43
Speaker 1: throwing your fast food out the window. I don't know, huh,
28:48
Speaker 1: but they should take your car. Yeah, I mean, I
28:50
Speaker 1: guess if you drove your car to the woods and
28:53
Speaker 1: had five hundred pounds of McDonald's packaging in your in
28:56
Speaker 1: your car and they could take your car. Uh. We
29:00
Speaker 1: do have a lot of statistics though, and Dave gave
29:03
Speaker 1: us statistics from two years two thousand nine and then
29:08
Speaker 1: and we'll explain why in a second. But in two
29:11
Speaker 1: thousand nine, they're big studies said that there were fifty
29:14
Speaker 1: one point two billion pieces of litter along America's roadways alone,
29:20
Speaker 1: just on the side of the road. That's more than
29:23
Speaker 1: sixty seven pieces of litter per mile. Uh and n
29:28
Speaker 1: that was less than four inches. Uh and I think
29:32
Speaker 1: thirty eight percent of that is is cigarette stuff, cigarette packs,
29:36
Speaker 1: cigarette butts, yeah, old dip cans. I think lighters falls
29:40
Speaker 1: under that tobacco product category. So tobacco products um are
29:45
Speaker 1: far and away the most littered uh thing, but cigarette
29:50
Speaker 1: butts are far and away the most littered part of
29:52
Speaker 1: tobacco products too. Yeah, and I think litter a cigarette
29:56
Speaker 1: butts are the last holdout for people who ordinarily woulden
30:00
Speaker 1: litter that that justify it. Like I will see cigarette
30:04
Speaker 1: butts flying out of a car with an environmental license plate.
30:09
Speaker 1: I've seen it, and I'm just like, what is going
30:11
Speaker 1: on here? I think people justify it. They don't want
30:16
Speaker 1: a lot well, a lot of cars don't even have
30:18
Speaker 1: ash trays anymore, Like I think you have to request one,
30:22
Speaker 1: and people don't want him stinking up their car, so
30:24
Speaker 1: they'll just throw them outside. It's true, it is true.
30:29
Speaker 1: There's just no way around it. I can't tell you
30:31
Speaker 1: how many cigarette butts I littered in my lifetime. You
30:34
Speaker 1: have major pints, so, my friend, huh, you have paid
30:38
Speaker 1: your pennance. I probably threw fast food out the window
30:40
Speaker 1: when I was fourteen. You know, it's shameful, we're more evolved. Well,
30:46
Speaker 1: thanks for letting me off the hook. I feel great now.
30:48
Speaker 1: You're like you threw fast food wretch up, you monster
30:53
Speaker 1: in what year? Hundreds of thousands of cigarette butts. We'll
30:59
Speaker 1: talk more about the negative effect of tobacco products. But
31:02
Speaker 1: the other year dave sentence was and it said, oh, look,
31:07
Speaker 1: things have decreased from two thousand nine, and cigarette butts
31:12
Speaker 1: even dropped, uh, from eighteen billion to five point seven billion.
31:16
Speaker 1: I believe that the cavity, well a lot of people
31:19
Speaker 1: not in as many people smoked, so that makes sense.
31:21
Speaker 1: But it was also during the pandemic, like the height
31:23
Speaker 1: of the pandemic, and nobody was driving. So I don't
31:26
Speaker 1: even know why they did a study that year unless
31:28
Speaker 1: they wanted to sort of shine the metal on their chest.
31:32
Speaker 1: That's what I think. I think so because I think
31:35
Speaker 1: if you yeah, I mean like you'd have to be
31:36
Speaker 1: silly to to conduct a study like that and not
31:39
Speaker 1: think like, oh, these results are going to be skewed.
31:41
Speaker 1: Everybody in the middle of any data that came out
31:44
Speaker 1: of was going to be unusual, so they would let's
31:48
Speaker 1: get out there and count exactly. Let's show everybody that
31:51
Speaker 1: this this disposable packaging things not a problem anymore. Because
31:54
Speaker 1: I hear that, I hear them getting mad about it. Again,
31:57
Speaker 1: I wonder how they do that. Did they just count
32:00
Speaker 1: a certain number of miles in different places and then
32:02
Speaker 1: extrapolate it, so I know in the two thousand nine methodology,
32:05
Speaker 1: I believe they used the same one, but they selected
32:08
Speaker 1: two hundred and forty different roadway segments. They did three
32:13
Speaker 1: hundred feet by fifteen feet segments, so basically right along
32:16
Speaker 1: the shoulder of the road for quite a ways, two
32:19
Speaker 1: forty of those in different parts of the country. And
32:21
Speaker 1: they literally counted every piece of trash, and they divided
32:26
Speaker 1: them up into two sizes four inches and bigger and
32:30
Speaker 1: then less than four inches and again in any category
32:34
Speaker 1: 'or like overall cigarette buts were far and away the most,
32:37
Speaker 1: but if you then go kind of take it down
32:40
Speaker 1: to the four inch or less category, it's like all
32:42
Speaker 1: cigarette butts basically. But that's that's how they did it.
32:45
Speaker 1: And then they um did the math and extrapolated to
32:49
Speaker 1: the the amount of roadway in the United States, and
32:52
Speaker 1: that's where they came up with those numbers. So any
32:54
Speaker 1: stretch of road that you're driving down in America on
32:59
Speaker 1: each side has probably about sixty seven hundred pieces of
33:05
Speaker 1: trash just sitting there. I mean, I know you already
33:08
Speaker 1: said it, but I think it bears repeating. Great. Uh,
33:12
Speaker 1: if we wanted to break down percentages more you have.
33:14
Speaker 1: Paper litter was about twenty one point nine percent. Uh.
33:18
Speaker 1: Part of the big problem. There's what's called instant litter,
33:21
Speaker 1: which are those dumb free newspapers and flyers that nobody wants. Yeah,
33:25
Speaker 1: but somebody like put some effort into laying it out
33:28
Speaker 1: and designing it. You know, even it's just sad for
33:31
Speaker 1: them to a certain extent, but it is nobody wants it.
33:35
Speaker 1: It's true. I mean, it's a job. Instant litter though.
33:39
Speaker 1: If you're that's a good TV character, movie characters like
33:42
Speaker 1: what do you do for a living? I'm a copywriter
33:44
Speaker 1: for instant litter. I feel great about that. That's like
33:49
Speaker 1: a character from reality bites. Yeah. Uh, plastic is another
33:55
Speaker 1: obviously big problem. Uh. They come in in third at
33:58
Speaker 1: nineteen percent. That's a I think, yeah, I mean that's
34:01
Speaker 1: what did it was that much or that little that that? Yeah,
34:04
Speaker 1: I thought that percentage was a little low. I thought
34:06
Speaker 1: it share would probably be more, wouldn't you. Yeah, because
34:10
Speaker 1: plastic isn't just a plastic bottle, like that's an obvious thing.
34:13
Speaker 1: But any tiny like plastic gum wrapper, any little piece
34:18
Speaker 1: of plastic is counted as plastic. Obviously, Freedo's wrapper, that's
34:22
Speaker 1: plastic plastic. M hmm, that's not foil. No, it's shiny
34:29
Speaker 1: milar plastic film. Yeah, like a balloon exactly. You can
34:33
Speaker 1: blow it up and take it to your kid's birthday
34:35
Speaker 1: and say happy birthday. Here's a Freedo balloon chump. Almost
34:39
Speaker 1: six percent metal, about four and a half percent glass,
34:42
Speaker 1: and then four two percent is organic litter, which we
34:47
Speaker 1: should talk about quickly because a lot of people think
34:50
Speaker 1: I could just throw my Apple Core and my banana
34:52
Speaker 1: peel out the window, and you shouldn't do that. No,
34:55
Speaker 1: this is this is something that like I, I could
34:59
Speaker 1: have guests, but I would still once in a while
35:02
Speaker 1: throw like an Apple Core or something out like that. Well,
35:06
Speaker 1: do you want to share why we shouldn't do that? Yeah,
35:09
Speaker 1: there's a lot of reasons. One um, and this this
35:12
Speaker 1: is why I did it. I thought it was quickly
35:15
Speaker 1: and easily biodegradable and compostable, and that at the very
35:18
Speaker 1: least if it wasn't eaten, it just went away pretty quickly.
35:21
Speaker 1: And there was a study done in Grand Canyon National
35:24
Speaker 1: Park um that where the scientists used to hike around
35:30
Speaker 1: the park buried like an orange peel, a banana peel.
35:34
Speaker 1: What was the other thing, like a kleenex I think
35:36
Speaker 1: chewing gum and a kleenex and left them for six
35:40
Speaker 1: months and came and dug them back up and nothing
35:43
Speaker 1: there was like basically no change like the banana. The
35:46
Speaker 1: banana peel turned like dark brown or black. That was
35:49
Speaker 1: about it. Like they had not decomposed at all. So
35:52
Speaker 1: that kind of like does away with it. And yes,
35:54
Speaker 1: it was in the Grand Canyon, so I'm sure in
35:56
Speaker 1: like the Florida Everglades it would probably decompose more. But
36:00
Speaker 1: the point is it's not. It's not decomposing in any
36:02
Speaker 1: really quick manner. And then secondly took apparently if the
36:06
Speaker 1: other thought I had where it's like, well, you know,
36:08
Speaker 1: an animal would love this apple, or uh, they don't,
36:12
Speaker 1: and even if they do, they shouldn't really have it anyway. Right, Yeah,
36:16
Speaker 1: And just a quick correction, she didn't actually bury it.
36:20
Speaker 1: She left it out in a in a cage, so
36:23
Speaker 1: it was exposed to the elements where animals could get
36:25
Speaker 1: to it. She did both. There was a second part
36:27
Speaker 1: where she buried it. Setting you up for the first part. Okay, well,
36:31
Speaker 1: the first part is, yeah, she left it. It was
36:33
Speaker 1: an open cage, so it's not like they were trapping animals.
36:35
Speaker 1: But I think the point is no animals were eating it,
36:39
Speaker 1: or at least not as much as people thought. But
36:41
Speaker 1: it's not good for them. It teaches them to hang
36:43
Speaker 1: around roadways and near trails and stuff like that. Um,
36:48
Speaker 1: instead of you know, getting their regular natural organic diet
36:51
Speaker 1: like deep into the woods. Uh. And it looks bad.
36:56
Speaker 1: You know that black banana peel is going to be
36:58
Speaker 1: there for a while. Yeah. It's one of the other
37:01
Speaker 1: problems with litter that the impact that has on wildlife.
37:03
Speaker 1: There's an estimate that's kind of bandied about all over
37:06
Speaker 1: the place is that about a million animals a year
37:09
Speaker 1: die from litter. I believe in the United States alone,
37:12
Speaker 1: A lot of them are aquatic animals. We talked about
37:16
Speaker 1: like ghost fishing that definitely would qualify as as aquatic litter.
37:20
Speaker 1: But also like if you throw a bottle out or
37:22
Speaker 1: something an animal might crawl in there and it can't
37:25
Speaker 1: get back out. There's a lot of dead animals that
37:28
Speaker 1: you'll find, like trapped inside a can or a bottle,
37:31
Speaker 1: which is a really direct harm that your litter can
37:34
Speaker 1: can leave on wildlife as well. For sure. I think
37:38
Speaker 1: the takeaway here in terms of food is just like,
37:41
Speaker 1: don't just don't throw anything on your walk or out
37:45
Speaker 1: of your car. Nothing. Pack it in, pack it out
37:47
Speaker 1: that set You've done everything right. Yeah, it's true. I
37:51
Speaker 1: mean I'll never throw an apple core, an orange peel
37:53
Speaker 1: or banana peel out anymore. And you know what I
37:56
Speaker 1: always say, there is no apple core who I know? Well,
38:01
Speaker 1: then I would throw out my uneaten portion of apple
38:03
Speaker 1: that I could eat crazy, thew away, the stem in
38:09
Speaker 1: the seeds. Maybe a new apple tree will grow in
38:10
Speaker 1: its place. Yeah, I would love to grow an apple tree.
38:13
Speaker 1: I love apples. Do we take Josh apple seed? Mm? Hm?
38:18
Speaker 1: Did we take a break? All right, we'll be right
38:20
Speaker 1: back with litter. Well, now we're on the road, driving
38:25
Speaker 1: in your truck. Want to learn a thing or two
38:28
Speaker 1: from Josh camp Chuck. It's stuff you should know, all right,
38:53
Speaker 1: all right? The other thing that keep America beautiful does
38:56
Speaker 1: is they try and figure out who these people are. Uh.
39:00
Speaker 1: They've done phone surveys. Uh in the nineteen sixties, I
39:04
Speaker 1: think sixty eight and the telephone survey, fifty percent of
39:07
Speaker 1: Americans said that they littered. Fifteen percent said they did
39:11
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine. Take that for what it is.
39:14
Speaker 1: It's a phone survey. Uh. And then they also sort
39:17
Speaker 1: of scope out areas near convenience stores and fast food
39:21
Speaker 1: restaurants and city sidewalks and they just look at behavior
39:25
Speaker 1: and uh. This in two thousand nine, that same study,
39:27
Speaker 1: they found it was close to ten thousand disposal behaviors
39:31
Speaker 1: that they looked at, and seventeen percent of those were
39:34
Speaker 1: litter behaviors. And of those litter behaviors were on purpose. Yeah,
39:41
Speaker 1: they call them notable intent. I'm throwing it out the window.
39:44
Speaker 1: It's not something that flew out of my car by exactly. Um. Uh.
39:51
Speaker 1: And the way that they came up with notable intent
39:54
Speaker 1: was was there like a garbage can and easy access
39:58
Speaker 1: or was there like an ash can and easy access
40:02
Speaker 1: that was visible and the people saw it and just
40:05
Speaker 1: didn't use it anyway. Um, there's a they in like
40:09
Speaker 1: a significant portion of people who litter just just litter.
40:13
Speaker 1: They they just do it anyway, even though there's plenty
40:17
Speaker 1: of like trash cans or ash cans right there. Um.
40:21
Speaker 1: And then the other percentage, the other fift percent of
40:23
Speaker 1: people who littered did it in the context of their
40:27
Speaker 1: not being a trash can nearby or uh slightly less
40:31
Speaker 1: acceptable that, um there was one, but it was really
40:34
Speaker 1: far away. It was all the way over there, you know. Well.
40:38
Speaker 1: And the other one too is the uh what fell
40:40
Speaker 1: into contacts and this is something it fell into context.
40:43
Speaker 1: And this is something you sent some other stuff about,
40:45
Speaker 1: is that people are more likely to litter when they
40:47
Speaker 1: see other litter. Yeah, so like this place is dirty anyway.
40:52
Speaker 1: There's people that, um that study this stuff, the psychology
40:55
Speaker 1: of littering. There's a that that study I found was
40:57
Speaker 1: I think from if I'm not mistaken, and they these
41:02
Speaker 1: social psychologists um Cialdini, Reno and cal Green. They they
41:09
Speaker 1: basically set people up by taking them to a parking
41:13
Speaker 1: deck and the parking deck was either heavily littered or
41:18
Speaker 1: it was spotless, right, so those were those are two variables.
41:23
Speaker 1: And then in each instance the people saw somebody litter,
41:27
Speaker 1: one of those instant litter flyers in either a heavily
41:30
Speaker 1: heavily littered parking deck or a non litter parking deck,
41:35
Speaker 1: and then they were sent back to their car, and
41:37
Speaker 1: their car had that same flyer right, and so um
41:42
Speaker 1: they were. They would see whether the people would litter
41:44
Speaker 1: based on having seen somebody else do it, and then
41:46
Speaker 1: whether it was a clean place or a heavily littered place.
41:50
Speaker 1: And they found that seeing somebody litter in a heavily
41:55
Speaker 1: littered place made them much much likelier to litter. But
42:01
Speaker 1: that the people This is the I think the most
42:03
Speaker 1: interesting thing. People who saw this person litter in a
42:08
Speaker 1: in a clean parking deck were far less likely to litter.
42:12
Speaker 1: They were the least likely to litter. So it's like
42:14
Speaker 1: seeing somebody else violate this social norm strengthens an individual
42:20
Speaker 1: sense of responsibility to not violate that norm themselves, Like
42:23
Speaker 1: it ticks them off and makes them less likely to
42:26
Speaker 1: to litter. So interesting. Yeah, so if you if you
42:30
Speaker 1: have already littered place, it's it's going to attract more letter.
42:33
Speaker 1: Litter begets litter. Yeah, I sort of littered recently in
42:38
Speaker 1: a way on my way into the SEC Championship game
42:42
Speaker 1: here in Atlanta. We were you know, like everybody was
42:45
Speaker 1: walking with their beers towards the stadium and there was
42:48
Speaker 1: one part where they funneled you through what I guess
42:50
Speaker 1: was um Our Martha our Subway systems property, and so
42:55
Speaker 1: there were people there are like, you can't take this
42:57
Speaker 1: through there, and everyone was like, oh geez, And they
43:00
Speaker 1: were probably beer cans on the sidewalk right there because
43:05
Speaker 1: they were saying drop it right here, didn't have cans
43:09
Speaker 1: or anything. And then on the way out, every single
43:11
Speaker 1: one of those cans was gone. So they cleaned them
43:12
Speaker 1: up during the game, and it was I guess part
43:15
Speaker 1: of the plan, but it was very strange to just
43:17
Speaker 1: throw your beer can on the ground because you're being
43:20
Speaker 1: told to do it. Yeah, and also everyone you know,
43:24
Speaker 1: power drinking at the end, like a bunch of dopes.
43:27
Speaker 1: But but it ways to have a beer. But knowing
43:31
Speaker 1: somebody's going to clean it up also influences the likeliness,
43:35
Speaker 1: the likelihood that you're going to litter. It makes it.
43:38
Speaker 1: It increases the likelihood you'll litter, like a park that
43:41
Speaker 1: you know is maintained or whatever. Yeah, for me, it
43:44
Speaker 1: was always a movie theater until somebody was finally like,
43:47
Speaker 1: you still just don't leave it there, just throw it away,
43:50
Speaker 1: like the trash can is right on the way. Yeah, exactly.
43:54
Speaker 1: But before they had the big prominent trash cans, like
43:57
Speaker 1: they had small, you know, slender, little trash. So you know,
44:02
Speaker 1: but yeah, I did that for many, many years. Yeah.
44:06
Speaker 1: I wondered about that today, if people would be more
44:10
Speaker 1: responsible in movie theaters, if they didn't clean up between
44:12
Speaker 1: movies and he walked in and saw a bunch of
44:16
Speaker 1: old garbage, and you're like, oh, what's that doing here?
44:20
Speaker 1: And if they said like, sorry, we're not clean up
44:21
Speaker 1: your We're not your parents. Yeah, there's like a poorly
44:27
Speaker 1: handmade sign from somebody that says this, this office is
44:31
Speaker 1: not your your parents house. You got to do your
44:34
Speaker 1: own dishes. I was always good at movie theaters because
44:36
Speaker 1: I've always had a guilt of and Hodgeman talks about
44:40
Speaker 1: it a lot is being aware of the work you
44:42
Speaker 1: leave for others. Uh, And I know, And I even
44:45
Speaker 1: had people to be like, they come in here and
44:47
Speaker 1: clean it, and I was like, well, that's one less
44:49
Speaker 1: popcorn back that they have to clean up. Then it's
44:51
Speaker 1: like it's fine. Yeah, you shoul would argue with me
44:53
Speaker 1: for doing it. Yeah, and you should never encourage somebody
44:56
Speaker 1: to litter anyway, like you know it's true, Like, yeah,
45:01
Speaker 1: I don't think I would have told you to just
45:02
Speaker 1: go ahead and litter. Who knows. I don't. Just thought
45:06
Speaker 1: it was weird. But the the I think to answer
45:09
Speaker 1: your question though, based on the studies I've seen, the
45:13
Speaker 1: more litter you found in a in a movie theater,
45:16
Speaker 1: the more likely you'd be to just litter on top
45:18
Speaker 1: of it. Well, I guess that makes sense, so it
45:20
Speaker 1: could be self defeating again, it's you want to make
45:24
Speaker 1: a strong social norm against littering, and then you want
45:29
Speaker 1: to keep places clean, and then in that context, if
45:34
Speaker 1: you see somebody littering, you're far less likely to litter.
45:37
Speaker 1: That's the that was. That's like the perfect storm of
45:40
Speaker 1: non littering from what I saw. But I have one
45:44
Speaker 1: more thing, Chuck about the um that that two thousand
45:47
Speaker 1: nine Keep America Beautiful study. You said that they were
45:49
Speaker 1: hanging around like convenience stores and stuff like that, so
45:52
Speaker 1: they would observe some people littering. I think they observed
45:55
Speaker 1: like twenty three people littering. Um or no, they observed
46:01
Speaker 1: like almost two thousand. I can't remember what the what
46:04
Speaker 1: the point was no, no, okay, I'm sorry, I got this.
46:06
Speaker 1: You're ready. So they would actually do these interventions, and
46:10
Speaker 1: I think they did about a hundred of them, where
46:12
Speaker 1: they would go up to people in the like convenience
46:15
Speaker 1: store or in the parking lot or whatever and just
46:17
Speaker 1: ask them about littering. And some of those people, I
46:20
Speaker 1: think twenty three of them, they had just seen litter,
46:25
Speaker 1: and they didn't go confront the people about littering. They
46:27
Speaker 1: just went and surveyed them and pretend they hadn't seen it.
46:31
Speaker 1: So they would ask everybody, have you littered within the
46:34
Speaker 1: last month, And like eight of those twenty three people
46:37
Speaker 1: said no, I have not littered in the last last month.
46:40
Speaker 1: Even though this the studied person had just seen them litter.
46:44
Speaker 1: They lied about it. So it makes you wonder about
46:46
Speaker 1: the veracity of that phone survey you mentioned earlier. I
46:48
Speaker 1: wonder if they said no, I haven't littered in the
46:51
Speaker 1: past month except for just form no no, no, what
46:54
Speaker 1: do you say, sir? Uh to button up the cigarette
46:59
Speaker 1: butt thinging? Uh? They are plastic as well. They're not biodegradable.
47:04
Speaker 1: They're made of cellulose acetate and they take decades to
47:08
Speaker 1: break down. And it's also tobacco products which has nicotine
47:13
Speaker 1: and arsenic and heavy metals and all kinds of nasty toxins,
47:17
Speaker 1: and those get in the soil, those leach into the ground,
47:20
Speaker 1: those fall into a waterway, those getting made into a
47:23
Speaker 1: bird's nest, and it's poison. Uh. There was a researcher
47:27
Speaker 1: that did an experiment where they put one cigarette butt
47:31
Speaker 1: in a gallon of water. Uh, and that was enough
47:34
Speaker 1: to kill half of the fish in side. Just a
47:35
Speaker 1: cigarette butt floating and dissolving in there, right, and not
47:38
Speaker 1: just from the plastic from like the nicotine, the heavy metals,
47:42
Speaker 1: the arsenic, all the stuff that gets trapped into a
47:44
Speaker 1: used cigarette, but once the full cigarette has been smoked
47:47
Speaker 1: through it, Yeah, yeah, kills the fish, kills half of them.
47:53
Speaker 1: That's uh. So if you hear the person with the
47:57
Speaker 1: keep America Beautiful sticker on your car and you're throwing
48:00
Speaker 1: your cigarette butts out of the the windows you don't like
48:01
Speaker 1: to smell, just do a little soul searching. Um Dave
48:05
Speaker 1: turned up a company called Green Butts that has come
48:08
Speaker 1: up with um truly compost herbal cigarette butts made of
48:11
Speaker 1: like manila, hemp and flax and I think cotton, and
48:16
Speaker 1: they have it so ready that tobacco companies would would
48:19
Speaker 1: simply have to buy them and put them in their
48:21
Speaker 1: assembly lines, make no change whatsoever. And apparently it hasn't
48:25
Speaker 1: taken off. I'm guessing because of cost. That would be
48:29
Speaker 1: my guest too. Yeah, if you want to fix littering,
48:33
Speaker 1: stop littering, that's step one. You can go a step
48:37
Speaker 1: further and pick up trash. Yeah. Step We have a
48:40
Speaker 1: program in our neighborhood, uh, like an official program where
48:43
Speaker 1: neighbors get together like once a month and do it.
48:46
Speaker 1: Uh and there and I donate my pickup truck to
48:49
Speaker 1: UH to haul the trash away. Uh. And we pick
48:52
Speaker 1: stuff up on our walks all the time. And you can.
48:55
Speaker 1: The Swedes invented something called plogging, which is where you
48:57
Speaker 1: take it back with you when you jog and pick
49:00
Speaker 1: stuff up, so you know, pick stuff up if you can.
49:04
Speaker 1: I do that sometimes and every time Maggy with you
49:07
Speaker 1: want to walk. Yeah, more like a like a grocery bag.
49:12
Speaker 1: And I think there's still bottle deposit laws here and
49:15
Speaker 1: there too, right, Yeah, there's like ten states that haven't,
49:17
Speaker 1: which I mean that's good. That's definitely a start. Ten
49:21
Speaker 1: states in Guam. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to leave
49:22
Speaker 1: you guys out um and that that I mean, that's
49:25
Speaker 1: a good way to go. It's getting back to reusable
49:27
Speaker 1: and the fact that that that structure is already there
49:30
Speaker 1: means you can easily adopt it in other states. You
49:32
Speaker 1: just get it started, and some of those states probably
49:35
Speaker 1: used to do it before. But I think the upshot
49:38
Speaker 1: of the whole thing is is like until we do
49:40
Speaker 1: something about the source of litter, which is actually disposable packaging,
49:47
Speaker 1: until we do something about that, we're always going to
49:50
Speaker 1: have a problem with it. Like it's just never going
49:52
Speaker 1: to go away. Because even if you don't mean to litter,
49:56
Speaker 1: sometimes it just happens. Like if you're a garbage trucker,
49:59
Speaker 1: you're hauling your your trash in the back of a
50:02
Speaker 1: pickup truck and some of it flies out like that
50:04
Speaker 1: that counts as litter, and that happens quite a bit.
50:06
Speaker 1: So we need to focus start focusing more on the
50:10
Speaker 1: supply side, not just the consumer side. I slung a
50:14
Speaker 1: Christmas tree out of the back of my truck the
50:15
Speaker 1: other day under the middle of memorial truck. That's litter.
50:19
Speaker 1: I pulled up to a stoplight and the people were
50:21
Speaker 1: honking at me next door, and I was like, what
50:22
Speaker 1: he said, you dropped your tree back there? I went, oh,
50:24
Speaker 1: thank you. All right, You're like, well, go get it.
50:28
Speaker 1: I'll be I'll wait here. Yeah, it was. And Memorial
50:32
Speaker 1: drives busy and fast. What a way to go out
50:35
Speaker 1: getting hit by a car pulling my old Christmas tree
50:38
Speaker 1: out of the very Christmas there's the headline, little known podcaster.
50:43
Speaker 1: And I was trying to do the right thing. You
50:46
Speaker 1: got anything else? I got nothing else. Don't litter. That's it.
50:50
Speaker 1: That's a good one to wrap it up with, Chuck.
50:53
Speaker 1: And since Chuck said don't litter, it's time for a listener, ma'am,
51:01
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this uh funny bone follow up. And
51:04
Speaker 1: this is from who is this from? A doctor of
51:08
Speaker 1: physical therapy? Has answers? Chuck has said when he goes
51:12
Speaker 1: to get a massage and the massage therapist rolls something
51:15
Speaker 1: up and down, that his hand curls up and and
51:17
Speaker 1: you were thinking this head to do with a nerve.
51:19
Speaker 1: Actually it's because of a length tension relationship with the
51:23
Speaker 1: flex or muscles in your arm. The tendons of your
51:27
Speaker 1: forearm muscles are very long and run through the carpal
51:29
Speaker 1: tunnel to allow tension to be applied through the tendon
51:31
Speaker 1: when you want to bind your wrist. This also means, however,
51:34
Speaker 1: that when enough pressure is applied to the muscle belly. Uh,
51:38
Speaker 1: I love that term. That's correct, it causes emotion similar
51:42
Speaker 1: to a muscle contraction that allows for the wrist to bend.
51:45
Speaker 1: You also question why cubital tunnel syndrome and tennis elbow
51:49
Speaker 1: weren't called the same thing, because they're very different. Cubital
51:52
Speaker 1: tunnel syndrome refers specifically to the ulnar nerving and trapped
51:55
Speaker 1: by tissues are swelling within the cubical tunnel, whereas tennis
51:58
Speaker 1: elbow is act. An injury to the extensor tendons in
52:02
Speaker 1: your forearm is a tendonitis. I see. I would explain
52:06
Speaker 1: that Samantha the doctor of physical therapy in Northern Wisconsin.
52:12
Speaker 1: Muscle Belly and my dreaming Is that really? What was
52:16
Speaker 1: just said? Muscle Belly our new band that's pretty like
52:20
Speaker 1: daft punk, just the two of us. That's all right.
52:22
Speaker 1: You be muscle, I'd be Belly, or like Sparks. Yeah.
52:27
Speaker 1: I love how the Sparks you are now. So yeah,
52:29
Speaker 1: I was just listening to number one song and heave
52:31
Speaker 1: an album before this clean. I think they're touring now again.
52:35
Speaker 1: They are, as a matter of fact, chucking they're coming
52:37
Speaker 1: to Atlanta. Are you going? I don't believe we're gonna
52:40
Speaker 1: be around to make it, muscle belly. If you want
52:44
Speaker 1: to be like Samantha and let us know some great
52:47
Speaker 1: new term plus a bunch of other physiological information, we
52:50
Speaker 1: love that kind of thing. You can send it to
52:52
Speaker 1: us via email at stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
52:59
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