Littering: Not Cool

both of these. Nice congrats. Sure, I think it's probably 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 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 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 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

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, 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 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 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 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, 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. 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

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, 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 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 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 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, 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. 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.

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, 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 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 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

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. 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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. 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, 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

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 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, 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 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 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 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.

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 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, 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 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

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, 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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

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 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, 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 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

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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

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, 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 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, 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 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. 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, 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. 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

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 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. 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.

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 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 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

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 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

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 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. 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, 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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.

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 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 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 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

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, 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H