Keep America Beautiful: Grassroots Non-Profit or Tobacco Front Group?

by Walter Lamb

Keep America Beautiful (KAB) is the best-known litter awareness group in the United States, thanks largely to its 1971 "crying Indian" public service announcement. KAB's stated mission is to "empower individuals to take greater responsibility for enhancing their local community environment." Yet KAB has shown a singular disinterest in empowering these communities to address the growing problem of cigarette litter, the most prolific form of litter in the world.

Recently uncovered tobacco industry documents help explain this seeming paradox. They show a pattern of industry funding and collusion between KAB and the tobacco industry, which uses its relationship with Keep America Beautiful to help downplay the global environmental issue of litter from cigarette butts.

This is not the first time that KAB has been accused of betraying the public trust on behalf of corporate polluters. In the 1970s and 1980s, a coalition of environmentalists and watchdog groups accused it of opposing various state and national efforts to establish mandatory bottle and can recycling. These bottle bills would have helped the litter problem but gored the ox of KAB's corporate sponsors such as Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch and the Reynolds Metal Company. KAB's track record on the issue of bottle bills earned it a spot in Mark Megalli and Andy Friedman's book, Masks of Deception: Corporate Front Groups in America.

The purpose of industry front groups is simple. Large corporations pay billions of dollars to influence legislation, get positive media coverage, and show a positive image to the public. By "laundering" their communications through front groups, corporations are able to create the illusion of impartiality and expertise. On issues such as bottle bill legislation or cigarette litter, the public is much more likely to listen to Keep America Beautiful than to Anheuser-Busch or Philip Morris.

Megalli and Friedman define front groups as organizations that are largely staffed, funded and controlled by corporations with vested interests that often conflict with the implied goals of the front group. Keep America Beautiful's national organization fits this description precisely.

Virtually all of KAB's funding comes directly from corporations with a vested interest in litter and solid waste management policies. This includes the four largest U.S. tobacco companies, Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson and Lorillard. The industry's now-defunct lobbying arm, the Tobacco Institute, was also a KAB supporter. Former Philip Morris Vice President and KAB President J.C. Bowling noted that he co-founded KAB "with several other like-minded corporate executives."

Keep America Beautiful is also a client of PR giant Burson-Marsteller, the multinational PR firm responsible for creating the National Smoker's Alliance, a front group created for Philip Morris to oppose restrictions on smoking in public places. In fact, KAB's "crying Indian" advertisement was designed by Marsteller Advertising, B-M's advertising wing. KAB's board of directors has included top B-M executive John J. Castellani. The tobacco industry and its PR advisers have controlled KAB's cigarette litter policy since the organization's inception, and the nation has paid the price by serving as a giant public ashtray.

Are Butts Beautiful?

Cigarette litter is surrounded by several carefully-cultivated myths. Many people think that cigarette butts are biodegradable, or that they are too small to be harmful. Most people are also unaware of the environmental damage that can be caused by the toxic residues in cigarette butts. For many people, especially smokers, flicking a cigarette butt out the car window or onto the ground is not even considered littering. In so doing, however, they are contributing to one of the world's largest litter problems.

"The waste products of cigarettes are clearly visible whenever you walk down the street or use a public beach," says Thomas E. Novotny, a public health physician who has studied the problem at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Worldwide, more than 5.5 trillion cigarettes are consumed each year, and 83% of cigarettes are filter-tipped. Cigarette filters contain cellulose acetate, which persists under normal environmental conditions for 18 months or longer. The filters are designed to trap toxic chemicals before they enter the smoker's body, but when the butts are thrown away, the toxins leach into the environment, a fact which has been reported by researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the CDC as well as in internal tobacco industry documents.

Cigarette butts pose a health hazard to children and animals who eat them. They have been found in the stomachs of fish, birds, whales and other marine creatures who mistake them for food. According to the National Capital Poison Center, ingestion of more than three cigarette butts can cause serious problems in a toddler. Littered cigarettes also cause numerous fires each year, some of them fatal.

Volunteers with the Washington, DC-based Center for Marine Conservation participate in the International Cleanup Project along shorelines in 90 countries each year. In their 1998 cleanup, cigarette butts were the leading item collected, accounting for almost 24% of all items found. Cigarette butts were nearly four times as likely to be found as the next most frequently found items (pieces of plastic).

The starting point for prevention of cigarette litter is to inform the public--smokers and nonsmokers alike--about the seriousness of the problem. An aggressive education-based program is needed to offset years of misinformation and rationalization and to ensure that smokers understand why it is important that they dispose of their cigarettes properly.

Keep America Beautiful is well suited to carry out such an educational program, with a solid organization of nearly 500 community affiliates across the country and an established reputation in the area of litter control. KAB has a paid public relations staff, a flashy web site, and a well-oiled specialty products division that sells brochures, coloring books, trash bags, pocket ashtrays and other litter-related merchandise. Yet it has flatly refused to touch the cigarette litter issue and in fact has engaged in efforts that undermine the efforts of my own organization, CigaretteLitter.org. It has even undermined the efforts of some of its own affiliates, many of which rank cigarette butts as the number one litter offender in their communities.

KAB's mindset is illustrated in one of its brochures titled "Preventing Litter." The opening paragraph of the brochure asks, "When was the last time you saw someone littering? It may be hard to remember."

Of course, anyone who counts cigarette butt flicking as littering likely witnesses this every time they walk down the street or spend a day at the beach. This mindset of excluding cigarettes as a form of litter from the public consciousness is exactly what the cigarette companies want.

Walt Amacker is the Vice President of Communications at Keep America Beautiful. Prior to that, he served in a similar capacity at Reynold's Metal Company, one of the vested interests that still opposes bottle bills. When pressed for information about KAB's cigarette litter policy, he responded that KAB is "negotiating" with Philip Morris on a new program, confirming that KAB is either unwilling or unable to implement a program without industry approval.

Keeping America Butt-Filled

The tobacco industry has a clear incentive for keeping a tight reign on Keep America Beautiful. Philip Morris describes the issue of solid waste management as an "environmental threat," meaning an environmental issue that threatens its business interests. Internal Philip Morris documents repeatedly list Keep America Beautiful as a tool to be used to fight solid waste legislation that would benefit communities but threaten profits.

In a 1993 corporate strategy outline, Philip Morris acknowledged that the company doesn't use recycled paper in packages and that "filter materials won't degrade." The document asserted that there can be no concession to environmentalists on this issue. Its strategy for avoiding any undesirable outcome, it stated, consists of disseminating the company line to "Public Officials, The Media, The Public, Environmentalists" through organizations including Keep America Beautiful, the CATO Institute and the Reason Foundation.

At Keep America Beautiful, all blame for litter and other solid waste problems falls on consumers and consumers alone. Pointing out areas where corporations could help alleviate problems through consumer education, packaging, or product redesign is labeled "finger-pointing" and is frowned upon. It is no coincidence that the industries that fund Keep America Beautiful share that view exactly.

Among the internal R.J. Reynold's documents that the company was forced to make public, there is a letter to advice columnist Ann Landers that was apparently ghost-written for KAB President Roger Powers by R.J. Reynold's staffers. Written in response to a Landers column critical of cigarette litter, it included Powers' signature block and at the top noted, "Letter Will be Printed on KAB Letterhead." An important line in the letter states, "As with all consumer products, the responsibility for proper disposal lies with the user of the product." This line is taken word for word from R.J. Reynold's own corporate talking points. The clear subtext is that corporations are not responsible for the problem.

Perhaps more to the point is a letter from Powers thanking the Tobacco Institute for financial support. Powers states that "the policy-making body of KAB is grateful for the Tobacco Institute's special help." This is the same Tobacco Institute that in a 1979 memo concluded, "our best course of action may be maintaining a low profile while working to exempt cigarettes from coverage of pending litter control legislation."

Following the Money

Viewed as a business expense, PM's contributions to KAB are extremely cost-effective. In 1999, Philip Morris divided a paltry $30,000 among KAB's national office and six of its affiliates.

To put that expense in context, it helps to imagine what the industry might have to pay if it didn't have KAB running interference. Without KAB's help, the tobacco industry might well be forced to compensate communities for the cost of cigarette litter. One large university, Penn State, estimated that cost at $150,000 on its campus alone. Even small colleges have cleanup costs in the tens of thousands of dollars. No matter how you do the math, cigarette litter costs society hundreds of millions of dollars per year.

The tobacco industry is also very selective and strategic in its funding of Keep America Beautiful, as one KAB affiliate discovered in 1993 when it applied directly for funding from Lorillard Tobacco. The funding request from Bright 'n' Beautiful, a KAB affiliate in Montana, made the mistake of explaining bluntly why the tobacco industry should donate.

"Most of our contributors have a vested interest in litter concerns, recycling and proper waste handling," the Bright 'n' Beautiful appeal stated. "Much education is needed for proper disposal of cigarette packaging and cigarette butts. It is common for smokers to throw their cigarettes out of their car windows; people have the disgusting practice of emptying ash trays in parking lots; high school students leave piles of butts by the school entrances and scattered around campuses. When we have community litter clean-ups, cigarette butts and cigarette packages are one of the most found sources of litter. Something really needs to be done! In light of the friendly image the tobacco industry is endeavoring to project, we are asking for your help in the form of support funding."

The Bright 'n' Beautiful request came with a letter of support from Montana Senator Max Baucus. In a copy of the Baucus letter found in the tobacco industry's archives, a Lorillard decision-maker scribbled the reasons for rejecting the request: "We have not supported Baucus since 1989. He is not a foe, but he is not a friend. ... Neither I nor the [Tobacco Institute] sees any real benefit to us."

So much for donating to help reduce the litter caused by their products. Bright 'n' Beautiful's mistake was in indicating that it actually planned to educate smokers not to litter. The industry has no incentive to do that. For decades it has benefited from the public misconception that cigarette litter is not important. Convenient packaging is a billion-dollar interest in the consumer goods industry. Companies spend enormous time and money developing new packaging techniques that are "easy to open," "resealable," "spill proof," etc. Philip Morris makes much ado about its "flip-top box" packaging. The industry is naturally reluctant for its 48 million U.S. customers to learn that proper cigarette disposal actually takes a little extra effort. Such a revelation might slow consumption, and that isn't acceptable to industry.

The national office of Keep America Beautiful understands this and makes sure there is no confusion that tobacco industry money is to be spent on tobacco industry approved programs. That is why the press release announcing its $30,000 Philip Morris grant didn't make any mention of cigarette litter.

Cleaning Up

While the national office of KAB remains silent, many of their affiliates along with other sectors of society are mobilizing to do something about cigarette litter. State legislators in Maine and New York have submitted bills to address the issue, and local communities in New Jersey, Massachusetts and California have taken measures. The topic has been covered by National Public Radio, USA Today, ABC News and the BBC.

Even today, however, visitors to the KAB website will find no information regarding the most frequently littered consumer product in the world. They will find no information concerning the nonbiodegradable nature of cigarette butts, the toxic chemicals which they contain, or the numerous costly and sometimes deadly fires attributed to cigarette litter.

The closest KAB has come to adopting a policy on cigarette litter is to endorse the "Urban Litter Initiative," a program masterminded by none other than Philip Morris. Not surprisingly, this program completely excuses Philip Morris, its customers and other smokers from any responsibility for cigarette butt litter and instead blames the problem on a lack of public ash/trash receptacles. The problem, it states, is that "adults who choose to smoke do not have convenient places to dispose of their cigarette refuse."

Like KAB, Philip Morris's publicity materials regarding this program do not mention any of the compelling reasons why smokers ought to properly dispose of their refuse. There is no discussion of responsibility, only convenience. Privately, representatives of Philip Morris have stated that placing more ashtrays in public places will benefit the company by validating smoking as standard social behavior.

The ash/trash approach blatantly ignores obvious patterns in cigarette litter. Billions of cigarettes are littered directly from cars, the overwhelming majority of which still have built-in ashtrays. Billions more are littered within mere yards of existing ash/trash receptacles, and billions wind up on beaches, in nature areas, and in other recreational areas where ash/trash receptacles would be costly and would detract from natural settings. An ash/trash experiment in Ocean City, New Jersey failed because smokers weren't educated on the importance of using the receptacles that had been installed.

Basically, the Philip Morris/KAB program serves as a distraction to the media, the public and elected officials who might otherwise pursue more common-sense approaches to cigarette litter reduction. In fact, tobacco companies have taken great pains not to educate their customers about this issue. It is common for other highly littered items such as soda cans, snack wrappers, and fast food containers to have a simple "Please Don't Litter" message. You won't find such a message on cigarette packs. Instead of adopting this common-sense strategy of education, the tobacco industry and KAB are supporting an intentionally ineffective PR-based program.

The closest KAB has come to adopting a policy on cigarette litter is to endorse a program masterminded by none other than Philip Morris.

KAB is quick to point to its almost 500 community affiliates and millions of local volunteers who participate in the annual Great American Cleanup. It is difficult to criticize their national operations without seeming to criticizing the several million well-meaning community volunteers (myself included) who participate in their cleanup event. KAB makes any criticism of the national organization look like an attack on these grassroots efforts. Just as Philip Morris uses KAB as a PR shield to deflect criticism, KAB uses its affiliates and volunteers.

While the work of these local groups is valiant, it is made all the more difficult by the fact that the national organization does not encourage corporations to do their share. An approach that calls upon millions of individuals to donate their time cleaning up other people's trash is much more desirable to KAB's corporate funders than an approach that calls for these companies to educate their consumers not to litter in the first place.

Keep America Beautiful's ineffective policies on cigarette litter have advanced the interests of their corporate donors at the expense of the public interest. The tobacco industry documents referenced above show a highly coordinated effort by the industry and Keep America Beautiful to keep cigarette litter out of the public consciousness. As a result, cigarette butts remain the most ubiquitous form of litter in the nation and the world, as smokers remain largely uneducated about the detrimental effects of their actions.

Progress is now being made despite KAB's resistance, as communities across the country are realizing they don't have to tolerate cigarette butt litter. If Keep America Beautiful would live up to its name and stop worrying about the industry consequences of sound environmental policy, progress would come at a much faster pace.

Walter Lamb is the founder of CigaretteLitter.org, a nonprofit organization dedicated to cleaning up cigarette litter.