Make All America Sparkle City! Put Litter In Its Place!

In the early 1970s, environmentalism was becoming a popular cause, particularly with young people, as pollution and an increasing amount of trash from a throwaway consumer society was creating problems. Corporate America was blamed for much of the situation so in the interest of their own public relations and image, they too jumped on the environmental bandwagon.

In the spring of 1971, around Earth Day, two public service announcements (PSAs) produced by the Keep America Beautiful organization and the Advertising Council (now Ad Council) hit the TV airwaves. One was the well-remembered "crying Indian" spot featuring a supposed Native American named Iron Eyes Cody (who claimed to be a Cherokee but was later revealed to be a Sicilian-American actor born Espera Oscar de Corti in 1904, died 1999) who walks around modern-day America seeing all the filth and pollution, finally driven to tears when someone in a passing car throws a bag of trash at his feet. "People start pollution. People can stop it," intones actor William Conrad in the voiceover.

The other, mostly seen during network children's programming on Saturday mornings was an animated spot featuring a character called Captain Cleanup, who looked like a combination of Dick Tracy and Superman, and his young sidekick, Kid Coolit. 

Captain Cleanup and Kid Coolit are seen flying over Sparkle City, the cleanest metropolis in America, when they spot Louie the Litterer and his Sewer Rat Gang about to make a mess of things. The superheroes confront them, Captain Cleanup rolls up his sleeve but never lays a hand on them (apparently to avoid depicting violence). Instead the villains beat themselves up and fall into garbage cans. "That's where you belong. In the waste can!" Captain Cleanup proclaims.

He then breaks the fourth wall and says, "Kids, you too can be a pollution fighter. Never throw trash into the street. Remember--you have to set an example for your parents." Then he says, "Make all America Sparkle City! Put litter in its place!" The spot ends with "Keep America Beautiful" on screen along with the Advertising Council "rotary-a" logo used at the time. 

The cartoon characters also appeared in print ads that ran in newspapers nationwide in the summer of 1971. "Don't throw empty cans, bottles or even apple cores out of car windows. Don't toss used tissues on the street, or cigarette butts in the gutter. Put litter in its place," the ad admonished.

Keep America Beautiful and the Ad Council wanted to make it a real children's crusade. The organizations teamed with shoe retailer Thom McAn and its 1,000 or so stores across the country to distribute Captain Cleanup membership kits to youngsters who were interested in starting their own Captain Cleanup anti-littering clubs in their communities. The kits included a membership card and "a series of instructions on what Captain Cleanup recommends to help keep America beautiful," according to an article in the Desert Sun of Palm Springs, CA from September 23, 1971. The article went on to report that over two million kits had been requested and received by kids nationwide, and that they had also been distributed to civic youth groups. 

The campaign received heaps of praise from seemingly everyone all the way up to President Richard Nixon but some serious environmentalists took issue with the whole Keep America Beautiful organization. The organization was founded in 1953 by American Can Company and Owens-Illinois Glass Company, both manufacturers of non-returnable beverage containers, at a time when states such as Vermont were looking at banning such containers. Soon big breweries and soft drink makers became part of the organization but didn't publicize it, so the corporate interests weren't widely known by the general public. 

The serious environmental activists accused Keep America Beautiful of being a shill for corporate polluters, shifting the blame for pollution and environmental hazards from manufacturers to the general public, making them believe they're the ones making the mess and they're the ones responsible for cleaning it up. Peter Harnik of Environmental Action, Inc. commented to United Press International in an article published in newspapers around the US on May 5, 1971, "Keep America Beautiful is sort of a front for keeping America quiet."

The Captain Cleanup campaign was just a small part of Keep America Beautiful and there was little criticism about it specifically, while the "crying Indian" campaign received much more criticism (as well as praise), but that's a whole other story.

While the Captain Cleanup spot continued to run off and on through the 1970s (NBC continued to play a ten-second edit of it well into the 1980s on Saturday mornings), organized Captain Cleanup clubs soon faded away. A search of newspapers finds few if any mentions beyond 1974.