Prior to World War II, it was rare to see a reference to trash or litter in the newspaper. After the War, the references began to appear every few months, and by the 1970s, they came in a deluge. As I noticed this, I couldn’t help but wonder–did people suddenly become more prone to dropping trash, or did we just suddenly begin to care? The answer, of course, is both.
Post-war euphoria may have been a factor. People had experienced many years of skimping—first through the Depression, then with wartime rationing and endless salvage drives. It may have just felt good to experience such abundance that they could toss things aside at will.
There was more trash. Many industries adopted “planned obsolescence” into their growth plans. They weren’t designing things to last forever; they expected them to be used for a few years and then replaced. As a result, within a few years we began to accumulate discarded appliances, cars, etc. At that time, most homes didn’t have regular trash pickup–they burned most of their trash and had to take unburnable things to a dump and pay a fee. As a result, many discarded things began to accumulate in convenient ravines and along country roads.
Councilman Fritz Brennecke called attention to litter, trash, and old car bodies in the area of south Illinois Avenue towards the Industrial school on “the old Hogback road.” Police Chief Ed Dohlman said the industrial school is using an old clay pit in that general area for a dump ground and trash is probably blowing out of the dump area.
Colorado Transcript – December 19, 1963
Plastic was adopted in a big way after the war. It really is a miracle material: it’s cheap, it can be molded into any shape, and it can be made either very weak or very strong. After the War, more and more things were made of plastic and designed to be thrown away. A razor is a prime example: razors used to be permanent possessions, with blades made to be sharpened. First razor blades became disposable, and now the entire razor is intended to be discarded when the blade becomes dull.
Packaging has been a growth industry for the past hundred years. Food used to be stored in bulk and dispensed by grocers, with minimal packaging (imagine a bin of spices, a jar of penny candy, or a joint of beef behind a butcher counter). After the War, grocery stores became self-service supermarkets, and food needed to be packaged so it could sit on a shelf or in a freezer case.
A February 9, 1956, Colorado Transcript discussed the problem. They did a study of Washington Avenue on a day when the street had been swept in the morning. By 12:45PM, they found the following in the gutters:
cigarette butts, about ten candy wrappers of all brands, a school paper, orange peel, several wads of waxed paper, broken pencil, two gum wrappers, cigar wrapper and cigar bands, piece of bubblegum, matches of wood and paper type, band aid, cough drop, cigarette pack, smashed candy bar, two paper bags several nickle-stick sticks, paper napkins, cleansing tissue, light plug stop, squashed chocolate, all sorts of candy boxes, soda straw, lemon drop, athletic program, paper cup, ice cream cup and some sticks of weeds along with dust since the wind is blowing.
A 1954 article written by a Golden High School student (when the high school was located across from Parfet Park) mentions the “bright and clean” park he sees when he arrives at school, then describes it after the students have eaten lunch there: “Our beautiful park has taken on the appearance of a dump. Lunch sacks, scraps of paper, and discarded apples litter the length and breadth of our private playground.”
As the piles of trash grew deeper, public consciousness of the problem grew. This was partly the result of a successful ad campaign run by the Keep America Beautiful organization, which was formed in 1953. In the 1960s, they began running television commercials showing Americans throwing trash out of car windows. Their greatest hit was the “Crying Indian” ad, released in 1971 and still considered one of the most effective Public Service Announcements of all time.
One thing we noticed--the litterbug campaign is paying off—highways once were strewn with tissues, papers, tin cans, etc.—all this has disappeared.
Colorado Transcript - Avenue Flashes Column--September 22, 1966
Throughout the 1960s and ’70s, states began introducing fines for littering.
More than $15,000 of game cash license money was used during 1968 to clean up bottles, cans and trash from fishing lakes around the state…. Would-be litterbugs might keep in mind that the fine for littering in Colorado is $100. It’s much cheaper to use a litter bag.
Colorado Transcript, January 9, 1969
Whether it was the ad campaign or Americans just realized on their own that they couldn’t keep littering forever, the country is a cleaner place now than it was 75 years ago. People use the downtown trash and recycling containers so assiduously that they regularly exceed capacity–but at least the trash is then hauled away.
