[readthenotes1]

No Ladybird Johnson like figure driving public policy in the 1960s, melding the hippies and government together?

The TV was inundated with public service announcements shaming trash throwers in the USA for maybe 15 years. It made a difference.

Having seen similar "just throw it on the ground" behavior in India and china, I think that it may be a natural response in a rural culture that needs to be changed once it is in a city and non degrading packaging is used

[wlesieutre]

Even “Don’t mess with Texas” started as an anti-littering campaign in the mid-80’s into the 90’s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Mess_with_Texas

[dredmorbius]

"Individual responsibility" anti-littering campaigns, most notoriously the 1971 "crying indian" advert, were strongly driven by industries associated with single-use packaging and products which overwhelmingly constituted such pollution. By putting the onus on individual "consumers", the producers were off the hook for responsibility.

Create an economy in which there is nothing to throw away, or in which costs of recovery and recycling are built in to the products themselves and effectively incentivise round-trip material flows, and the problem largely solves itself. Market dynamics tend strongly away from such mechanisms.

Free-market advocates like to point to the general success of anti-pollution, clean air, clean water, safety, and other similar measures in rich Western countries, without acceding in the least that overwhelmingly such progress has come through courts, legal processes, and social advocacy, rather than market mechanisms. Wealth overwhelmingly has shown that it is self-serving power, as Adam Smith noted nearly 250 years ago.

There's a 1967 interview of Ralph Nader by Studs Terkel I've recently run across, and which describes very much what's happening now as it did the circumstances of nearly 60 years ago, though the industries addressed have shifted somewhat. I cannot recommend this highly enough.

<https://studsterkel.wfmt.com/programs/ralph-nader-discusses-...>

Direct audio: <https://s3.amazonaws.com/wfmt-studs-terkel/published/11364.m...> (MP3)

[selimthegrim]

The "Walker told me I have litter" mashup/reboot of this is waiting to happen

[dylan604]

The "Don't mess with Texas" campaign is supposed to have been fairly effective. I just don't know who is making that determination. If it has been effective, I would hate to see what it without. I'm just not sure where the "learning" is established that some people get it and others don't