Littering: Not Cool

The history of litter is in lock step with the history of disposable packaging. Learn all about this nasty habit today.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
and there's Chuck and Jerry's here, and this is stuff
you should know that you already headed right towards something

(00:22):
brilliant that it's all you stop yourself. I yeah, I
didn't have anything, so I just just let it die
right there on the still in front of everybody. Hey,
before we get going, we want to plug a couple
of podcasts from our colleagues. I had a hand in
both of these. Nice congrats. Sure, I think it's probably

(00:45):
the last thing I'll have a hand in. Ever. Why
is that? Are you dying? No, I mean we're all dying. Uh,
nothing imminent, but I don't know. The door, you know,
doesn't often knock for voice acting, although you never can tell,
but I did a piece of voice acting for Lethal
Lit season two premiere. And if you if you don't

(01:09):
know what Lethal Lit is, it is, Uh, technically it's
called Lethal Lit colin a tig Tours Mystery season two
and it just debuted yesterday. Season two did, But it is.
It's great. It's like a sort of an old school
Nancy Drew Detective Team detective type of thing, but modernized,
got a little more punch, but you know, it's still

(01:29):
family friendly. A little more punch of seen, a little
more bite with the emphasis, Um, it's really great. Yeah,
So it is, like it's the kind of thing from
what I understand that like adults can enjoy, but it's
it's also geared towards like younger listeners to right. Yeah,
I mean they say it's like Nancy Drew for scream fans. Uh.
But the people who make it are awesome. And Heather

(01:53):
iron Horn created it a couple of years ago when
I was still doing like development stuff. I met with
her and she rang me up a couple of years
later and said, hey, how about doing a piece of
voice acting for the season premiere season two? And I did,
and it was so much fun. I got to like
really get a juicy character acting type of things. I

(02:13):
can't wait to hear it. Chuck, I'm not just playing me.
That's great. Even when you played you, I thought you
did a good job. You're a much better actor than
you give yourself credit for. This was a lot of fun.
Though I wish I could do more of this kind
of stuff, but I just I don't like pursue it.
But anyway, it was a lot of fun. So you
can hear me in season episode one of season two,

(02:33):
which is out now on the I Heart Network. And
then our buddy Joe Randazzo has a new show that's out.
Didn't didn't he tell him the name? Uh? Dr sex Reese.
It is not family friendly. No, you could have just
said Joe Randazzo and that that would have gotten that across.
Not family family guy. He is one of the great

(02:55):
comedic geniuses of our time, but he's not family friendly. No, no,
So it's it's a blue comedy. It's very, very funny,
but you don't want your kids listening. But it is
about a Colin show is a sex therapist who has
never had intercourse. And that's kind of all you need
to say. And it's Joe, so yeah, it's great. I

(03:16):
mean you had me at Joe Randazzo, so yeah, And
that's out now too, right, Uh, it's already out. And
I don't think I ever mentioned in lieu of listener mail.
One week, I was going to mention it, but I forgot.
Remember when I said I wasn't very into Calvin and
Calvin and Hobbs like I never read it. He He
left me a voicemail driving with his three children where

(03:37):
they sounded like a fire torch wielding angry mob screaming
at me about not getting into Calvin and Hobbs. I'm
gonna cheer it with you. It's very funny, like his
kids sound like. It's like Lord of the Flies level upset.
It's awesome. His kids are chuck. It's really funny. But anyway,

(04:00):
Dr Sex Race is already out. Uh and then Lethal
It It it Tick towards Mystery. Season two dropped yesterday. Well,
congratulations to everybody. Congratulations I think most of all to
you though for appearing on Lethal Lit. It was fun.
I wish I could voice act a lot. I have
a feeling you're gonna get a lot more requests starting now.

(04:23):
We'll see people be like, who was who was that guy?
I'm not going to reveal anything about it, but okay.
I did a very small part on squid Billies a
few years ago. It was never released with me. Yeah,
that's like our kiss of death. When you have us
on your talk show, it gets canceled. It within a month. Now,
it wasn't canceled. It was I think I think I

(04:45):
think our friend Dave willis replace me. I don't think
I was very good and that one, at least he
did it quietly. I never followed up with him. I
should have asked, but I was ready to go in
there and do some good like redneck voice, because I
do some good ones. And he said, he's like, no,
just once, You're just gonna be you. And I went, oh, Dave,

(05:07):
you just gave me a soda pop and sent me
on my way. Oh you got a free soda pop. Fun.
We love Dave and Squidbillizo so no, no shade there. Okay,
so welcome to the podcast for everybody. Just fast forwarded
through all that and got to the market where we
started about littering. How about that? Yeah, And this one
was one of my picks, and I very simply thought

(05:28):
of it recently because I was driving down the road
and two and saw a fully grown adult human throw
a bag of trash out their window, followed by a
cup of fast food soda filled with dip spit, so
two different throws out of the car, and I just thought,
my god, who does that? And uh, let's let's see

(05:50):
if we can find out. And you ran them off
the road. No, I was just so upset though. It's
just so weird to see. I'm really really working on
letting things trigger or flood me in starting in year finally.
And uh, I'm very curious how how well I would
deal with actually seeing that, Like I'm doing okay hearing

(06:12):
about it right now, Like I'm a little jazzed right now,
but I got it under control. Actually seeing it, I
don't know how well I could contain myself. I was
ticked off, but it's um, I try to let things
go quicker, so it's not like hours later, I was
still like, Ah, that guy. That's good. You know that's good. Yeah,
that's because you know what. You can't change that guy. No,

(06:33):
you can't. You can just run him off the road. Yeah,
or find them if you're a government sure. I mean,
if you had tried to find him, he probably would
have laughed in your face. Although I'm saying he it's
just as possible. It turns out, Chuck, at least if
this had happened in two thousand nine, that it could
have been she too. Huh. Yes, statistically speaking, that is true.

(06:54):
But I saw this guy's ugly face. I'll bet he
was so ugly and stupid. I bet his whole family
was so stupid. Yeah, I've been so mad if he
was handsome, handsome, smart people don't litter typically unless they're
Don Draper. All right, let's do this litter right. Yeah.

(07:15):
I think it was a good pick. One of the
things that I love about this episode is it's kind
of mind bending. Um. One of those bern Asian surprises
is firmed wedged firmly inside this episode's topic. M M,
don't you think I'm sure? I know what you mean?
Oh sure, I do. Okay. I was like, oh god,
that's like four pages of this stuff. No, no, no,

(07:38):
you may I just I forgot who Bernese was. I
was thinking about the sauce. You're like, it sounds good
but confusing. Uh should we start with the word yeah,
let's I thought that was a good place to also
shout out to Dave Ruse for helping us out with
us as always as ever, so, the word litter with
one T came from old friend to Middle English meant

(08:01):
a bed with two teas. It was like a portable
bed that if you were like a king or somebody,
you could travel around on one of these and I
guess that's where a rescue litter comes from. Okay, I thought,
because I've always thought that was such a weird word
for it. It is very weird. It doesn't really make
any sense. But the use of the word bed for

(08:21):
litter makes much more sense because it comes from our
friends down on the farm. Yeah, our farm, our farmer friends.
You mean you're talking about scattering hey. Yeah, Like if
you if you scatter hey for an animal to sleep on,
particularly like livestock or something like that, you would call

(08:42):
that their litter. And there you have it. That's where
it comes from, Like littering food out of your car,
derived initially from being a kind farmer and scattering hey
for your little goats. Yeah. Because along the way, somebody
equated like scattering stuff on the ground that you wouldn't
normally want on the ground with people throwing their trash
on the ground, and so litter became used as litter.

(09:04):
What surprised me is that, um that this started way
back in the eighteenth century. I would have thought it
was a much more recent phenomenon, but no, it isn't. Yeah.
Day found a uh something from a novel in reference
to the word litter as litter. If she is cutting
a piece of gauze or paper, she's sure to make

(09:25):
a litter all over the room. Yeah, it's like a mess.
It was a literary reference to litter, so that's where
the word later came from. And I'd love one. I'd
love I like the stories of the etymologies where there's
some really great theories because nobody quite knows, but I
find those less satisfying than the ones where it's like

(09:46):
here it is, here's your answer, fish Bolb. Yeah. Uh,
littering was not as big of a deal here in
the United States, and I imagine in other parts of
the world, but we're talking mainly about the US with
these sta uts, but until the fifties and sixties, because
we were generally a culture of reusing things and there

(10:07):
were not nearly as many disposable things. Uh, a lot
of glass and you know, Emily talks about her grandparents
in Middle Ohio in the nineteen forties and fifties and
they re used a lot of stuff. And it wasn't
it wasn't like because of a green movement. It was
just like people reuse stuff. Things cost money, and if

(10:28):
you weren't like wealthy, you reuse things. Yeah, I mean
that was even if you were wealthy, you typically reuse things.
Like if you got milk, you would leave your empty
milk bottles out and the milkman would come along and
replace the empty bottles with filled up bottles, and it
would take those other bottles, clean them and reuse them.
Like that was just how you got milk. Whether you

(10:49):
were wealthy or poverty stricken didn't matter, And that was
just the way that society was up until the post
World War two economic boom, where um, thanks to a
lot of technology that we developed during the war, all
of a sudden, we had packaging that we could produce
really cheaply and really efficiently, and no way to make

(11:11):
a bunch of money off of them off of it
until some enterprising I guess beverage companies and and um
disposable packaging companies got together and said, we've got to
figure this out, because there's a lot of a lot
of money being lost by this deeply inefficient reuse economy
that we've got. Yeah, and I know I've mentioned this

(11:33):
once before, but I'm just fifty years old, and I
actually I mean, we could get milk in the store,
but we also occasionally would go to a dairy nearby
and bring milk bottles. It wasn't in the milkman coming
to your house, but we would go to a dairy
and pull up and get our milk exchanged. Uh. And
the other relic from the seventies that you probably remember too,

(11:53):
that you know, younger listeners might be shocked to here
is the Charles chips. Dude, Oh that we got canister chips. Yeah.
We You would get potato chips Charles Chips delivered and
you would give them your big you know, it's like
a big metal tin full of potato chips. And it

(12:14):
wasn't like, oh it was a tin with a bunch
of bags of little chips. No, it was full of
potato chips and you would get your potato chips delivery.
It's crazy to think about. We we never had that.
I remember the Schwann's delivery person. And then prior to
if you want to bottle water, it meant that somebody
showed up at your house with like a five or

(12:34):
ten gallon jug of water and you had a little
water dispenser that was bottled water before and those were
all reusable. Yeah, we'll probably speak ill of single use
of plastic bottles of water. Well, I think you should.
I think anybody, any sensible person sees the disposable packaging
that that um really kind of drives a lot of

(12:56):
our our economy and a lot of the products that
we buy as really problematic. And litters just one aspect
of it, but it's a pretty big aspect of it.
But I think what we're saying here in total to
begin is that litters actually a fairly recent phenomenon, starting
in maybe the fifties, the nineteen fifties. Yeah. And Dave

(13:16):
also points out that not only were we reusing things
and just not having as many disposable items, but there
weren't trash cans all over the place back then either
like there are now. And there weren't signs that say, hey,
you know, it's weird to throw stuff just on the
ground when you leave. Uh. And he he did reference

(13:36):
a Madman episode, which is very funny. I remember when
it happened. The drapers are on a picnic, and they
got up afterward and done through his spear bottle in
the woods, and Betty shook the litter off the blanket
onto the grass in the park and then they got
in their car it's hysterical and just leave it there. Yeah.
The one that always gets me is the anchorman thing
where they're all eating McDonald's and walking and they just

(13:58):
all throw their track. Yeah, yeah, I mean it was
there was a time when that was. I don't know
if it was ever acceptable, but it was certainly not
like it is now. As far as you know, you
were like shunned, not frowned upon. But it didn't take
very long for people to say, like this is this
is objectively ugly, like even if you you were not
taking the environment into account, which they certainly weren't at first,

(14:21):
but in like the fifties and sixties, there were still
people that were like it, this looks terrible. And they
were even like farmers apparently in Vermont were complaining that
people are just throwing their glass bottles out the out
the window. Because, by the way, even though you could
still reuse some of the stuff, the the companies producing
these um these um goods that were in like disposable packaging,

(14:45):
they were they were encouraging people to just throw this away.
Like there were there was um oh, what's the name
of that podcast or that MPR show through Line. They
did a really great episode on on what we're talking
about here, the development of teaching people to throw stuff away.
There were actual like ads and commercials and p s.

(15:07):
A s that taught people like, Okay, when you're done
with this, just throw it away. You don't have to
figure out a way to reuse it or wash it out,
or you can just throw it away. And like people
had to be taught that, which kind of goes to
show how unnatural the whole thing is. But but my
point is that even at the time, chuck um, there
were people who had problems with littering from the outset,

(15:29):
even if it wasn't like a massive thing at that point,
like a society wide issue. Yeah, and God bless Vermonters. Uh.
You mentioned the farmers there with a broken glass for
their cows. But they sponsored and got past the first
what would be known as bottle bills. Uh when in

(15:50):
three they banned throwaway bottles. And this is where you
know the writing was on the wall for the beverage
industry in particular, was like, oh, you know, Vermont, they're
a bunch of hippies. Sure, but we can't let this
catch on and get our product band, we'll be in
big trouble, and I guess we'll take a break maybe

(16:13):
because that's a great cliffhanger and dive into our barn
Asian nightmare. Right, let's do it, all right, we'll be
right back. Well, now we're on the road, driving in
your truck. Want to learn a thing or two from
Josh Damp Chuck gets stuff you should know. All right,

(16:51):
So we were entering that barn Asian nightmare. Now, Chuck,
it's like a giant Goya painting of corporate interests. This
one's tricky because it is a Bernasian nightmare and we're
talking about the creation of Keep America Beautiful. Uh, but
it it all like I have very mixed feelings because
the whole thing with Keep America Beautiful is is a

(17:15):
lot of big beverage companies got together, Dixie Cup, Coca Cola, Owens,
Illinois Glass Company, American Can Company, and they said, all right,
we gotta fight these bottle bills. Um. And the way
we're gonna do it is through a pr spin to
tell everybody that it's their responsibility to not litter. And

(17:37):
in a way it's sort of an evil plan, but
in another way, I'm like, yeah, you should be individually
responsible to not do that. But then also beverage companies
also have a responsibility that they completely shirt, So I
get it. But I also think people have a personal responsibility,
you know what I mean. I I think that's a
very sensible way of looking at it, because I agree

(18:00):
with it fully, Like, yes, Like, there's nothing wrong with
them coming up with keep America beautiful and teaching people
to not litter, and then in conjunction with that, actually
putting those garbage cans out and putting you know, creating
like a public service campaign that taught people like, don't
be a litter bug. If you if you litter, your unpatriotic.

(18:21):
They basically used every angle they could think of. The
problem with it that everybody has an issue with. Once
you find out about this is that it was the motivation,
the intent behind it. It wasn't too to beautify America.
It was to keep the train, this disposable packaging train
going right, Like, hey, everybody stopped throwing the stuff on

(18:42):
the ground or else we're not going to be able
to make this anymore. But even more than that, they
took the they took the spotlight off of the question
why is there so much disposable packaging to begin with?
Why don't we go back to reusable stuff that was working.
And these companies are like, no, no, no, we we
are make fifty times more money with this disposable stuff
because you guys are buying way more and then um,

(19:06):
and then it put the spotlight onto the individual person.
It said, it's your responsibility stop asking about disposable packaging
and just start focusing on your civic duty to not wither. Yeah,
and you sent me an article that had an interesting
bit that and we'll cover some more stuff in this
time period. But by the early seventies, some more of
these bottle bills, Uh, we're happening. And they weren't so

(19:29):
much banning things, but it was like, hey, let's incentivize
people to come back and turn in their knee high
grade bottle for five cents, which also remember doing when
I was a kid. Uh. And in nineteen seventy four,
California was considering a bottle bill, and Keep America Beautiful
was like, whoa, this is big time because that's a

(19:50):
huge economy out there. And they actually publicly opposed the
measure for the first time, and there was a leaked
story about the chairman the American can Company, William F. May,
called bottle bill supporters communists, And this is when the
e p A pulled out and a bunch of environmental
groups pulled out of Keep America Beautiful. And we're like, oh,

(20:14):
that's like the light was kind of shining on them
for the first time. Yeah, that that like, oh, these
guys aren't really you know, environmentally conscious. There's this is
strictly greenwashing for them. It was the first greenwashing attempt
and it was super successful too. Yeah. They spent fourteen
million dollars over a five year span in the early

(20:35):
nineties to defeat a national bottle bill. So Keep America
Beautiful does some great work, but it's you know, you
gotta know what goes on behind this stuff. You know.
That's absolutely true. And that's good that they are doing
good work because they are basically the sole source for
data about littering in America at very least, they're the

(20:57):
most robust source. But as Dave puts it, um it's
bankrolled by corporate interests. But the people conducting these these
um these studies are actually like environmental engineers and their
disinterested bodies insofar as you know, they're still scientists although
they're being paid, like they're not cooking the books. No,

(21:18):
And you know, I mean like yeah, it's it's a
very like I'm just writhing right here. I can't. I
just want this to be clear, like should I hate
keep America beautiful or not? But um, but but I
don't because they are They have had a huge effect
on littering, demonstrably a big effect on on reducing littering

(21:39):
and teaching people not to litter. It's just again for
their bottom lines, that's the problem. And they are still
the number one largest anti litter organization on planet Earth.
So there's something to be said for that. Uh. And
they've had many ways to get their message out there
over the years. I think their first little mascot was
Susan Spotless, who talked about who shamed litter bugs early on? Uh.

(22:05):
And then you know, we don't remember what episode, but
very on and stuff early on and stuff. You should
know we talked about the what it was known at
the time, the crying Indian p s A. Do you
remember why we would have talked about that? M I don't.
Years ago, I cannot, I have no idea why that

(22:26):
would have come up? Well, what was the deal with that?
It was sort of fake on many fronts, right, it was.
I mean one of the big things was that Ironized Cody,
who was known for a while as America's favorite Indian,
was not Native American by any way, shape or form.
He was actually a Sicilian American um actor. Oh, that's

(22:48):
a big one that people definitely at the time didn't
know um. And that was problematic not just because this
guy was Sicilian um, but that also the Native American
that is being used in this ad, the very image
of the Native American was was just totally co opted
by this corporate group to again shame you into not

(23:11):
littering too, for you to feel bad, not them to
feel bad, for you to feel bad for littering. Um.
And it it also the the other thing that I
saw that was a big critique of is that if
you'll notice, like the Native American Ironized Cody um or
the character doesn't speak, he's spoken for by a narrator
um and so he's he stands mute, which I saw

(23:32):
as a testament to his powerlessness. Yeah, I mean, if
you don't know what we mean that you can find
it on YouTube. Still, it was a minute long commercial
where it showed this Native American in full you know,
sort of traditional garb paddling a traditional Native American canoe
through what looked like the Kyoga River in Ohio. I

(23:53):
know it wasn't there, but it couldn't have been any
more industrial with this sort of we're chant kind of
music playing in the background. It was kind of wrong
in many levels, you know, through today's lens. But you know,
he's getting more sad as he sees how poorly the
water is treated in the shore line. And then he

(24:14):
finally gets out and a bag of fast food is
tossed from a car and explodes at his feet with
seemingly an entire order for like a family of five
a fast food. It's so much food, it's like did
theyn't eat anything out of that back? And then in
a single tier once you see his face, Yeah, they

(24:35):
pan up and and his face is there and it's
he's crying, which may have been faked as well, right, Yeah,
I think it was a glycerin concoction. Yeah, so um, yeah,
what's what's not great under today's in today's view was
like award winning and groundbreaking back in nine when the
ad came out and it had an effect. It had

(24:55):
a huge effect. The the AGG Council, who I helped
reduced that p s A apparently had to send out
replacement reels because the original ones were getting worn out
because they're being played so often. As the long standing
anecdote goes, but if you're yeah, yeah, I can't remember
the last time I saw it, but I definitely saw

(25:16):
it on TV at some point, as you know, a
cognizant person, you know, right, And so it was created
in seventy one, and it was I remember seeing it
throughout the nineteen seventies. So if and if you're like,
was it really effective, stop and ask yourself if you
feel guilty at the thought of littering or at the
act of littering itself, And if your answers yes, it's

(25:38):
because the Keep America Beautiful group did a really good
job putting the personal responsibility of not littering onto us. Yeah,
which again it does make sense that like, uh, it's
just a shame it couldn't have been sort of a
hand in hand type of approach, right. The Park Service
also got into it too. Chuck with um Woodsy the Owl.

(25:59):
Did you see that that that clip I sent you
the ad? Yeah? I used to love Woodsy. Sure, how
could you not give a hoot? Don't pollut? Yeah, I
got a wood see sign at my camp. Oh that's cute. Yeah.
I like the seventies version. Have you seen the updated version?
I don't think so. He's kind of buff. He looks
like he could beat you up. He's almost like buff

(26:20):
in the way that Ned Flanders is buff, like a
wholesome buffness, that strangely menacing, weird a buff owl. Yeah, yeah, great,
great point. The other thing that keep America Beautiful was
successful at was lobbying for litter laws. Uh and so Nino.
Now there are all kinds of fines for both littering

(26:41):
and the most reprehensible kind of littering, which is dumping. Um.
One of my favorite bands of all time, Granddaddy, has
a song called Broken Household Appliance National Forest, where Jason
Little is a big outdoorsy guy and he their lyrics
are about like, you know, a forest just littered with

(27:01):
with appliances and animals living in them and uh and
it's not like it is obviously admonishing tongue in cheek,
but he's sort of like, you know, it's got a
nice a nice home for a bunny instead of an
oven door, and you know that kind of thing. But
dumping is just there. There's a spot in my neighborhood
where people will still dump stuff. Uh you know, it's
like if you find a spot of woods with a creek,

(27:22):
like you might find a couch in there one day.
It's awful, right, that's dumping. It's usually it's either like
five pounds is usually the standard, or a certain size
like so many cubic feet or something like that. But
it's like trash trash plus basically. And that's the ones
where like you can get a really big fine or

(27:43):
even jail time. I think a Tennessee you can get
up to six years for dumping. Um And in most
states if you dump for commercial purposes, like you're a
junk hauler and you go dump in the woods, no
matter how much or how little you dump, you can
get jail time for that. And I'm pretty stiff fine.
I think in Maryland it's like thirty dollars, and of

(28:04):
course it should be that way. Um. The problem is
is like the the I think the fine for littering
is either not enough to deter people who do litter still,
or it's unevenly applied apparently, like like jaywalking. Remember we
talked about in the short Stuff episode that jaywalking tickets
are not not distributed equally among the races in America. Yeah,

(28:28):
same deal with the littering, right, Yeah, same thing. So, uh,
they can take your driver's license. If you litter from
a car in certain states, you can have your vehicle
taken away. I think that's only for dumping, not like
throwing your fast food out the window. I don't know, huh,
but they should take your car. Yeah, I mean, I

(28:50):
guess if you drove your car to the woods and
had five hundred pounds of McDonald's packaging in your in
your car and they could take your car. Uh. We
do have a lot of statistics though, and Dave gave
us statistics from two years two thousand nine and then
and we'll explain why in a second. But in two

(29:11):
thousand nine, they're big studies said that there were fifty
one point two billion pieces of litter along America's roadways alone,
just on the side of the road. That's more than
sixty seven pieces of litter per mile. Uh and n
that was less than four inches. Uh and I think

(29:32):
thirty eight percent of that is is cigarette stuff, cigarette packs,
cigarette butts, yeah, old dip cans. I think lighters falls
under that tobacco product category. So tobacco products um are
far and away the most littered uh thing, but cigarette
butts are far and away the most littered part of

(29:52):
tobacco products too. Yeah, and I think litter a cigarette
butts are the last holdout for people who ordinarily woulden
litter that that justify it. Like I will see cigarette
butts flying out of a car with an environmental license plate.
I've seen it, and I'm just like, what is going
on here? I think people justify it. They don't want

(30:16):
a lot well, a lot of cars don't even have
ash trays anymore, Like I think you have to request one,
and people don't want him stinking up their car, so
they'll just throw them outside. It's true, it is true.
There's just no way around it. I can't tell you
how many cigarette butts I littered in my lifetime. You
have major pints, so, my friend, huh, you have paid

(30:38):
your pennance. I probably threw fast food out the window
when I was fourteen. You know, it's shameful, we're more evolved. Well,
thanks for letting me off the hook. I feel great now.
You're like you threw fast food wretch up, you monster
in what year? Hundreds of thousands of cigarette butts. We'll

(30:59):
talk more about the negative effect of tobacco products. But
the other year dave sentence was and it said, oh, look,
things have decreased from two thousand nine, and cigarette butts
even dropped, uh, from eighteen billion to five point seven billion.
I believe that the cavity, well a lot of people

(31:19):
not in as many people smoked, so that makes sense.
But it was also during the pandemic, like the height
of the pandemic, and nobody was driving. So I don't
even know why they did a study that year unless
they wanted to sort of shine the metal on their chest.
That's what I think. I think so because I think
if you yeah, I mean like you'd have to be
silly to to conduct a study like that and not
think like, oh, these results are going to be skewed.

(31:41):
Everybody in the middle of any data that came out
of was going to be unusual, so they would let's
get out there and count exactly. Let's show everybody that
this this disposable packaging things not a problem anymore. Because
I hear that, I hear them getting mad about it. Again,
I wonder how they do that. Did they just count
a certain number of miles in different places and then

(32:02):
extrapolate it, so I know in the two thousand nine methodology,
I believe they used the same one, but they selected
two hundred and forty different roadway segments. They did three
hundred feet by fifteen feet segments, so basically right along
the shoulder of the road for quite a ways, two
forty of those in different parts of the country. And
they literally counted every piece of trash, and they divided

(32:26):
them up into two sizes four inches and bigger and
then less than four inches and again in any category
'or like overall cigarette buts were far and away the most,
but if you then go kind of take it down
to the four inch or less category, it's like all
cigarette butts basically. But that's that's how they did it.
And then they um did the math and extrapolated to

(32:49):
the the amount of roadway in the United States, and
that's where they came up with those numbers. So any
stretch of road that you're driving down in America on
each side has probably about sixty seven hundred pieces of
trash just sitting there. I mean, I know you already
said it, but I think it bears repeating. Great. Uh,

(33:12):
if we wanted to break down percentages more you have.
Paper litter was about twenty one point nine percent. Uh.
Part of the big problem. There's what's called instant litter,
which are those dumb free newspapers and flyers that nobody wants. Yeah,
but somebody like put some effort into laying it out
and designing it. You know, even it's just sad for
them to a certain extent, but it is nobody wants it.

(33:35):
It's true. I mean, it's a job. Instant litter though.
If you're that's a good TV character, movie characters like
what do you do for a living? I'm a copywriter
for instant litter. I feel great about that. That's like
a character from reality bites. Yeah. Uh, plastic is another

(33:55):
obviously big problem. Uh. They come in in third at
nineteen percent. That's a I think, yeah, I mean that's
what did it was that much or that little that that? Yeah,
I thought that percentage was a little low. I thought
it share would probably be more, wouldn't you. Yeah, because
plastic isn't just a plastic bottle, like that's an obvious thing.
But any tiny like plastic gum wrapper, any little piece

(34:18):
of plastic is counted as plastic. Obviously, Freedo's wrapper, that's
plastic plastic. M hmm, that's not foil. No, it's shiny
milar plastic film. Yeah, like a balloon exactly. You can
blow it up and take it to your kid's birthday
and say happy birthday. Here's a Freedo balloon chump. Almost

(34:39):
six percent metal, about four and a half percent glass,
and then four two percent is organic litter, which we
should talk about quickly because a lot of people think
I could just throw my Apple Core and my banana
peel out the window, and you shouldn't do that. No,
this is this is something that like I, I could

(34:59):
have guests, but I would still once in a while
throw like an Apple Core or something out like that. Well,
do you want to share why we shouldn't do that? Yeah,
there's a lot of reasons. One um, and this this
is why I did it. I thought it was quickly
and easily biodegradable and compostable, and that at the very
least if it wasn't eaten, it just went away pretty quickly.

(35:21):
And there was a study done in Grand Canyon National
Park um that where the scientists used to hike around
the park buried like an orange peel, a banana peel.
What was the other thing, like a kleenex I think
chewing gum and a kleenex and left them for six
months and came and dug them back up and nothing

(35:43):
there was like basically no change like the banana. The
banana peel turned like dark brown or black. That was
about it. Like they had not decomposed at all. So
that kind of like does away with it. And yes,
it was in the Grand Canyon, so I'm sure in
like the Florida Everglades it would probably decompose more. But
the point is it's not. It's not decomposing in any
really quick manner. And then secondly took apparently if the

(36:06):
other thought I had where it's like, well, you know,
an animal would love this apple, or uh, they don't,
and even if they do, they shouldn't really have it anyway. Right, Yeah,
And just a quick correction, she didn't actually bury it.
She left it out in a in a cage, so
it was exposed to the elements where animals could get
to it. She did both. There was a second part

(36:27):
where she buried it. Setting you up for the first part. Okay, well,
the first part is, yeah, she left it. It was
an open cage, so it's not like they were trapping animals.
But I think the point is no animals were eating it,
or at least not as much as people thought. But
it's not good for them. It teaches them to hang
around roadways and near trails and stuff like that. Um,

(36:48):
instead of you know, getting their regular natural organic diet
like deep into the woods. Uh. And it looks bad.
You know that black banana peel is going to be
there for a while. Yeah. It's one of the other
problems with litter that the impact that has on wildlife.
There's an estimate that's kind of bandied about all over
the place is that about a million animals a year

(37:09):
die from litter. I believe in the United States alone,
A lot of them are aquatic animals. We talked about
like ghost fishing that definitely would qualify as as aquatic litter.
But also like if you throw a bottle out or
something an animal might crawl in there and it can't
get back out. There's a lot of dead animals that
you'll find, like trapped inside a can or a bottle,

(37:31):
which is a really direct harm that your litter can
can leave on wildlife as well. For sure. I think
the takeaway here in terms of food is just like,
don't just don't throw anything on your walk or out
of your car. Nothing. Pack it in, pack it out
that set You've done everything right. Yeah, it's true. I

(37:51):
mean I'll never throw an apple core, an orange peel
or banana peel out anymore. And you know what I
always say, there is no apple core who I know? Well,
then I would throw out my uneaten portion of apple
that I could eat crazy, thew away, the stem in
the seeds. Maybe a new apple tree will grow in
its place. Yeah, I would love to grow an apple tree.

(38:13):
I love apples. Do we take Josh apple seed? Mm? Hm?
Did we take a break? All right, we'll be right
back with litter. Well, now we're on the road, driving
in your truck. Want to learn a thing or two
from Josh camp Chuck. It's stuff you should know, all right,

(38:53):
all right? The other thing that keep America beautiful does
is they try and figure out who these people are. Uh.
They've done phone surveys. Uh in the nineteen sixties, I
think sixty eight and the telephone survey, fifty percent of
Americans said that they littered. Fifteen percent said they did
in two thousand nine. Take that for what it is.

(39:14):
It's a phone survey. Uh. And then they also sort
of scope out areas near convenience stores and fast food
restaurants and city sidewalks and they just look at behavior
and uh. This in two thousand nine, that same study,
they found it was close to ten thousand disposal behaviors
that they looked at, and seventeen percent of those were

(39:34):
litter behaviors. And of those litter behaviors were on purpose. Yeah,
they call them notable intent. I'm throwing it out the window.
It's not something that flew out of my car by exactly. Um. Uh.
And the way that they came up with notable intent
was was there like a garbage can and easy access

(39:58):
or was there like an ash can and easy access
that was visible and the people saw it and just
didn't use it anyway. Um, there's a they in like
a significant portion of people who litter just just litter.
They they just do it anyway, even though there's plenty
of like trash cans or ash cans right there. Um.

(40:21):
And then the other percentage, the other fift percent of
people who littered did it in the context of their
not being a trash can nearby or uh slightly less
acceptable that, um there was one, but it was really
far away. It was all the way over there, you know. Well.
And the other one too is the uh what fell
into contacts and this is something it fell into context.

(40:43):
And this is something you sent some other stuff about,
is that people are more likely to litter when they
see other litter. Yeah, so like this place is dirty anyway.
There's people that, um that study this stuff, the psychology
of littering. There's a that that study I found was
I think from if I'm not mistaken, and they these
social psychologists um Cialdini, Reno and cal Green. They they

(41:09):
basically set people up by taking them to a parking
deck and the parking deck was either heavily littered or
it was spotless, right, so those were those are two variables.
And then in each instance the people saw somebody litter,
one of those instant litter flyers in either a heavily

(41:30):
heavily littered parking deck or a non litter parking deck,
and then they were sent back to their car, and
their car had that same flyer right, and so um
they were. They would see whether the people would litter
based on having seen somebody else do it, and then
whether it was a clean place or a heavily littered place.
And they found that seeing somebody litter in a heavily

(41:55):
littered place made them much much likelier to litter. But
that the people This is the I think the most
interesting thing. People who saw this person litter in a
in a clean parking deck were far less likely to litter.
They were the least likely to litter. So it's like
seeing somebody else violate this social norm strengthens an individual

(42:20):
sense of responsibility to not violate that norm themselves, Like
it ticks them off and makes them less likely to
to litter. So interesting. Yeah, so if you if you
have already littered place, it's it's going to attract more letter.
Litter begets litter. Yeah, I sort of littered recently in
a way on my way into the SEC Championship game

(42:42):
here in Atlanta. We were you know, like everybody was
walking with their beers towards the stadium and there was
one part where they funneled you through what I guess
was um Our Martha our Subway systems property, and so
there were people there are like, you can't take this
through there, and everyone was like, oh geez, And they
were probably beer cans on the sidewalk right there because

(43:05):
they were saying drop it right here, didn't have cans
or anything. And then on the way out, every single
one of those cans was gone. So they cleaned them
up during the game, and it was I guess part
of the plan, but it was very strange to just
throw your beer can on the ground because you're being
told to do it. Yeah, and also everyone you know,
power drinking at the end, like a bunch of dopes.

(43:27):
But but it ways to have a beer. But knowing
somebody's going to clean it up also influences the likeliness,
the likelihood that you're going to litter. It makes it.
It increases the likelihood you'll litter, like a park that
you know is maintained or whatever. Yeah, for me, it
was always a movie theater until somebody was finally like,

(43:47):
you still just don't leave it there, just throw it away,
like the trash can is right on the way. Yeah, exactly.
But before they had the big prominent trash cans, like
they had small, you know, slender, little trash. So you know,
but yeah, I did that for many, many years. Yeah.
I wondered about that today, if people would be more

(44:10):
responsible in movie theaters, if they didn't clean up between
movies and he walked in and saw a bunch of
old garbage, and you're like, oh, what's that doing here?
And if they said like, sorry, we're not clean up
your We're not your parents. Yeah, there's like a poorly
handmade sign from somebody that says this, this office is

(44:31):
not your your parents house. You got to do your
own dishes. I was always good at movie theaters because
I've always had a guilt of and Hodgeman talks about
it a lot is being aware of the work you
leave for others. Uh, And I know, And I even
had people to be like, they come in here and
clean it, and I was like, well, that's one less
popcorn back that they have to clean up. Then it's
like it's fine. Yeah, you shoul would argue with me

(44:53):
for doing it. Yeah, and you should never encourage somebody
to litter anyway, like you know it's true, Like, yeah,
I don't think I would have told you to just
go ahead and litter. Who knows. I don't. Just thought
it was weird. But the the I think to answer
your question though, based on the studies I've seen, the

(45:13):
more litter you found in a in a movie theater,
the more likely you'd be to just litter on top
of it. Well, I guess that makes sense, so it
could be self defeating again, it's you want to make
a strong social norm against littering, and then you want
to keep places clean, and then in that context, if

(45:34):
you see somebody littering, you're far less likely to litter.
That's the that was. That's like the perfect storm of
non littering from what I saw. But I have one
more thing, Chuck about the um that that two thousand
nine Keep America Beautiful study. You said that they were
hanging around like convenience stores and stuff like that, so
they would observe some people littering. I think they observed

(45:55):
like twenty three people littering. Um or no, they observed
like almost two thousand. I can't remember what the what
the point was no, no, okay, I'm sorry, I got this.
You're ready. So they would actually do these interventions, and
I think they did about a hundred of them, where
they would go up to people in the like convenience
store or in the parking lot or whatever and just

(46:17):
ask them about littering. And some of those people, I
think twenty three of them, they had just seen litter,
and they didn't go confront the people about littering. They
just went and surveyed them and pretend they hadn't seen it.
So they would ask everybody, have you littered within the
last month, And like eight of those twenty three people
said no, I have not littered in the last last month.

(46:40):
Even though this the studied person had just seen them litter.
They lied about it. So it makes you wonder about
the veracity of that phone survey you mentioned earlier. I
wonder if they said no, I haven't littered in the
past month except for just form no no, no, what
do you say, sir? Uh to button up the cigarette
butt thinging? Uh? They are plastic as well. They're not biodegradable.

(47:04):
They're made of cellulose acetate and they take decades to
break down. And it's also tobacco products which has nicotine
and arsenic and heavy metals and all kinds of nasty toxins,
and those get in the soil, those leach into the ground,
those fall into a waterway, those getting made into a
bird's nest, and it's poison. Uh. There was a researcher

(47:27):
that did an experiment where they put one cigarette butt
in a gallon of water. Uh, and that was enough
to kill half of the fish in side. Just a
cigarette butt floating and dissolving in there, right, and not
just from the plastic from like the nicotine, the heavy metals,
the arsenic, all the stuff that gets trapped into a
used cigarette, but once the full cigarette has been smoked
through it, Yeah, yeah, kills the fish, kills half of them.

(47:53):
That's uh. So if you hear the person with the
keep America Beautiful sticker on your car and you're throwing
your cigarette butts out of the the windows you don't like
to smell, just do a little soul searching. Um Dave
turned up a company called Green Butts that has come
up with um truly compost herbal cigarette butts made of
like manila, hemp and flax and I think cotton, and

(48:16):
they have it so ready that tobacco companies would would
simply have to buy them and put them in their
assembly lines, make no change whatsoever. And apparently it hasn't
taken off. I'm guessing because of cost. That would be
my guest too. Yeah, if you want to fix littering,
stop littering, that's step one. You can go a step

(48:37):
further and pick up trash. Yeah. Step We have a
program in our neighborhood, uh, like an official program where
neighbors get together like once a month and do it.
Uh and there and I donate my pickup truck to
UH to haul the trash away. Uh. And we pick
stuff up on our walks all the time. And you can.
The Swedes invented something called plogging, which is where you

(48:57):
take it back with you when you jog and pick
stuff up, so you know, pick stuff up if you can.
I do that sometimes and every time Maggy with you
want to walk. Yeah, more like a like a grocery bag.
And I think there's still bottle deposit laws here and
there too, right, Yeah, there's like ten states that haven't,
which I mean that's good. That's definitely a start. Ten

(49:21):
states in Guam. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to leave
you guys out um and that that I mean, that's
a good way to go. It's getting back to reusable
and the fact that that that structure is already there
means you can easily adopt it in other states. You
just get it started, and some of those states probably
used to do it before. But I think the upshot
of the whole thing is is like until we do
something about the source of litter, which is actually disposable packaging,

(49:47):
until we do something about that, we're always going to
have a problem with it. Like it's just never going
to go away. Because even if you don't mean to litter,
sometimes it just happens. Like if you're a garbage trucker,
you're hauling your your trash in the back of a
pickup truck and some of it flies out like that
that counts as litter, and that happens quite a bit.
So we need to focus start focusing more on the

(50:10):
supply side, not just the consumer side. I slung a
Christmas tree out of the back of my truck the
other day under the middle of memorial truck. That's litter.
I pulled up to a stoplight and the people were
honking at me next door, and I was like, what
he said, you dropped your tree back there? I went, oh,
thank you. All right, You're like, well, go get it.
I'll be I'll wait here. Yeah, it was. And Memorial

(50:32):
drives busy and fast. What a way to go out
getting hit by a car pulling my old Christmas tree
out of the very Christmas there's the headline, little known podcaster.
And I was trying to do the right thing. You
got anything else? I got nothing else. Don't litter. That's it.
That's a good one to wrap it up with, Chuck.

(50:53):
And since Chuck said don't litter, it's time for a listener, ma'am,
I'm gonna call this uh funny bone follow up. And
this is from who is this from? A doctor of
physical therapy? Has answers? Chuck has said when he goes
to get a massage and the massage therapist rolls something

(51:15):
up and down, that his hand curls up and and
you were thinking this head to do with a nerve.
Actually it's because of a length tension relationship with the
flex or muscles in your arm. The tendons of your
forearm muscles are very long and run through the carpal
tunnel to allow tension to be applied through the tendon
when you want to bind your wrist. This also means, however,
that when enough pressure is applied to the muscle belly. Uh,

(51:38):
I love that term. That's correct, it causes emotion similar
to a muscle contraction that allows for the wrist to bend.
You also question why cubital tunnel syndrome and tennis elbow
weren't called the same thing, because they're very different. Cubital
tunnel syndrome refers specifically to the ulnar nerving and trapped
by tissues are swelling within the cubical tunnel, whereas tennis

(51:58):
elbow is act. An injury to the extensor tendons in
your forearm is a tendonitis. I see. I would explain
that Samantha the doctor of physical therapy in Northern Wisconsin.
Muscle Belly and my dreaming Is that really? What was
just said? Muscle Belly our new band that's pretty like

(52:20):
daft punk, just the two of us. That's all right.
You be muscle, I'd be Belly, or like Sparks. Yeah.
I love how the Sparks you are now. So yeah,
I was just listening to number one song and heave
an album before this clean. I think they're touring now again.
They are, as a matter of fact, chucking they're coming
to Atlanta. Are you going? I don't believe we're gonna
be around to make it, muscle belly. If you want

(52:44):
to be like Samantha and let us know some great
new term plus a bunch of other physiological information, we
love that kind of thing. You can send it to
us via email at stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio.
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(53:07):
favorite shows. H