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WiseChoices t1_ja8vfzh wrote

I don't think anyone in this generation can imagine the enormous impact that this had on American hearts.

It was important.

It is important.

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MagicPeacockSpider t1_ja91uch wrote

Sadly while it may have appeared to be to stop littering and protect the environment it wasn't.

It was the plastics lobby shifting the blame onto consumers for plastic waste and littering because there has started to be some ideas of banning it or taxing it.

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cdiddy19 t1_ja92hmq wrote

Yup their reports came out that they were polluting the earth, so they shifted the blame to the everyday man

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WiseChoices t1_ja924f0 wrote

To me, what it changed was our heart attitudes for the Earth.

Greed continues to destroy it. Sad, but true 👍

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gopher_space t1_ja9qht2 wrote

There were grassroots anti-littering campaigns all over the place back then, so it was an easy sentiment to tap into. It's really hard to convey how OK everyone used to be about littering.

If you've seen Anchorman there's a little bit where the news team are eating hotdogs and walking through a park. They come up to a trash can but throw their dogs on the ground before tipping the can over. Then they just walk away and there's no explanation. That was normal life until the 80s.

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derpy-_-dragon t1_jabgmvq wrote

I remember watching an episode of Madmen for my English writing class in college where the family went out for a picnic at the park, and when they finished they just flapped the sheet to toss the trash off of it and then put the blanket in the trunk.

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Wobbley19 t1_ja9f6yd wrote

Yep and they got this poor guy hook line and sinker, clearly believes it’s the individual and not the companies fault

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user-name-1985 t1_ja90dd3 wrote

I only knew about it from retrospective/nostalgia shows on TV in the late 90s.

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WiseChoices t1_ja913t2 wrote

It hit people like a wave of reality.

Everyone was talking about it.

Many things changed because of it.

A history making image.

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user-name-1985 t1_jaa27b7 wrote

Even though the native guy was played by an Italian actor?

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nethermead t1_jabacpe wrote

Even though the ad campaign was bought and paid for by the plastics industry that wanted to preemptively shift the moral responsibility of cleaning up their shit to the regular joe so that they wouldn't have to foot the bill and could happily keep pumping out cheap plastic bags and bottles that now clutter the oceans as vast floating islands of semi-toxic flotsam?

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Merky600 t1_jacs3sh wrote

Yes. I’m older and remember this as a kid. Very young kid.

Us kids probably keyed into this more, taking to the heart, as they say. The older generation I imagine rolled their eyes. Their attitude toward litter was “trashy” to be sure. I can recall opening the package of some toy in the backseat of a car on family trip. I asked what should do w the packaging. “Oh just toss it out the window,” was the reply. So I did. Can’t remember the toy but remember the cardboard fling out the window.
And cigarettes.
To people who smoked, the whole world was an ash tray.

Also as kids, we were closer the litter. Literally. Walking home from school we could see it all at our feet. So the subject of litter was relevant.

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5050Clown t1_jabbwtz wrote

It's one of the many contributing factors that cause right-wing conservatives to look at Native American faces and then tell them to go back to Mexico. They were replaced by Europeans in their mind. Just like Jesus.

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