Stuff You Should Know - Littering: Not Cool

Episode Date: February 10, 2022

The history of litter is in lock step with the history of disposable packaging. Learn all about this nasty habit today. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here and this is Stuff You Should Know. You were headed right towards something brilliant. That's all you stopped

yourself. Yeah, I didn't have anything so I just let it die right there on the still front of everybody. Hey, before we get going, we want to plug a couple of podcasts from our colleagues. I had a hand in both of these. Nice, congrats. Sure. I think this is probably the last thing I'll have a hand in ever. Why is that? Are you dying? No. I mean, we're all dying. Nothing imminent, but I don't know. The door 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. If you don't know what lethal lit is, because technically it's called lethal lit colon, a Tig Torres mystery season two,

and it just debuted yesterday, season two did, but it's great. It's like a sort of an old school Nancy Drew detective, teen detective type of thing, but modernized. It's got a little more punch, but it's still family friendly. A little more punch. I've seen a little more bite with the emphasis on a little. It's really great. Yeah. It's the kind of thing from what I understand that like adults can enjoy, but it's also geared toward like younger listeners too, right? Yeah. I mean, they say it's like Nancy Drew for scream fans. Oh, cool. But the people who make it are awesome. And Heather Einhorn 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 thing. 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 in 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. Tell him the name. 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 friendly. He is one of the great comedic geniuses of our time, but he's not family friendly. No. No. So 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. He's 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? It's already out. And I don't think I've ever mentioned in lieu of listener mail one week. I was going to mention it, but I forgot. Okay. Remember when I said I wasn't very into Calvin and Hobbes? Like I never read it. Right. 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 Hobbes. I told you. I'm going to share 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 aren't family friendly either. He's screaming at me. Really funny. But anyway, Dr. Sex Reese is already out. And then Lethal Lit, a Tig Torres 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 going to get a lot more

requests starting now. Well, we'll see. People will be like, who was that guy? I'm not going to reveal anything about it, but. Okay. I did a very small part on Squidbillies a few years ago. It was never released with me. Oh, yeah. That's like our kiss of death when you have us on your talk show. It gets canceled within a month. No, it wasn't canceled. I think our friend Dave Willis replaced me. I don't think I was very good in 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, I just want you to just kind of be you. And I went, oh, Dave, he just gave me a soda pop and sent me on my way.

Oh, you got a free soda pop. We love Dave and Squidbillies though. So no, no shade there. Okay. So welcome to the podcast for everybody who just fast forwarded through all that and got to the part where we started about littering. How about that? Yeah. And this one was one of my picks and I very simply thought of it that recently because I was driving down the road in 2022 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 tips spit. So two different throws out of the car. And I just thought, my God, who does that? And 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 wonder now, I'm really, really working on not letting things trigger or flood me in my starting in my 45th year finally. Yeah. Yeah. And 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 I try to let things go quicker. So it's not like hours later, I was still like, Oh, 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 them off the road. Yeah. Or find them. If you're a government, sure. I mean, if you

would try 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 2009, that it could have been she too, huh? Yeah, statistically speaking, that is true. But I saw this guy's ugly face. I'll bet he was so ugly and stupid. I'll 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. I wouldn't know. 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. One of those Bernaysian surprises is wedged firmly inside

this episode's topic. Mm, 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. I forgot who Bernays was. I was thinking about the sauce. You're like, it sounds good, but confusing. Should we start with the word? Yeah, let's. I thought that was a good place. Also, shout out to Dave Ruse for helping us out with this. As always, as ever. Sure. So, the word litter with one T came from Old French and Middle English meant a bed. With two T's, 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.

Exactly. Okay. 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 farmer friends? Yeah. You mean you talking about scattering hay? Yeah. Like if you scatter hay 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 hay 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. So, litter became used as litter. What surprised me is that that this started way back in the 18th century. I would have thought it was a much more recent phenomenon, but no, it isn't. Yeah. Dave found something from a novel in 1788 that referenced 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 litter came from. I like that the stories or 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, fishbowl. Yeah. 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 stats, but until the 50s and 60s, because we were generally a culture of reusing things, and there were not nearly as many disposable things. A lot of glass, and Emily talks about her grandparents in middle Ohio in the 1940s and 50s, and they reused a lot of stuff, and it wasn't like because of a green movement. It was just like people reuse stuff. Things cost money, and if you weren't wealthy, you reuse things. Yeah. Even if you were wealthy, you typically reuse things. 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. That was just how you got milk, whether you were wealthy or poverty-stricken. It didn't matter, and that was just the way that society was up until the post-World War II economic boom, where 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 it, until some enterprising, I guess, beverage companies and disposable packaging companies got together and said, we've got to figure this out, because there's 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 50 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 the milkman coming to your house, but we would go to a dairy and pull up and get our milk exchanged, and the other relic from the 70s that you probably remember too, that younger listeners might be shocked to hear, is the Charles Chips dude. Oh, that canister of chips? Yeah, you would get potato chips, Charles Chips delivered, and you would give them your big,

you know, it was 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 chip delivery. It's crazy to think about. We never had that. I remember the Schwann's delivery person, and then prior to 1990, if you want to bottle water, it meant that somebody showed up at your house with like a five or 10 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 plastic bottles of water throughout. Well, I think you should. I think anybody, any sensible person sees the disposable packaging

that really kind of drives a lot of our economy and a lot of the products that we buy as really problematic, and litter's 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 litter's actually a fairly recent phenomenon starting in maybe the 50s, the 1950s. 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. And he did reference that Mad Men episode, which is very funny. I remember when it happened, the Drapers were on

a picnic, and they got up afterward and taunt through his beer 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 trash down. 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 50s and 60s, there were still people that were like, it, this looks terrible. And there 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 this stuff, the, the, the companies producing these, these goods that were in like disposable packaging, they were, they were encouraging people to just throw this away. Like there were, there was, 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 PSAs 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, 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. You mentioned the farmers there with a broken glass for their cows, but they sponsored and, and got past the first, what would be known as bottle bills. When in 1953, they banned throwaway bottles. And this is where, you know, the writing was

on the wall for the beverage industry in particular was like, uh-oh, you know, Vermont, they're a bunch of hippies, sure. But we can't let this catch on and get our product banned. And, uh, we'll be in big trouble. And I guess we'll take a break maybe because that's a great cliffhanger. Sure. And dive into our Bernaysian nightmare, right? Let's do it. All right, we'll be right back. Well, now when you're on the road driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck? It's stuff you should know. All right. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay. I see what you're

doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with

Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down.

Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So we're entering that Bernaysian nightmare now, Chuck. It's like a giant Goya painting of corporate interests. This one's tricky because it is a Bernaysian nightmare. And we're talking about the creation of Keep America Beautiful. But I have very mixed feelings because the whole thing with Keep America Beautiful 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 got to fight

these bottle bills. And the way we're going to 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 shirked. So I get it. But I also think people have a personal responsibility. You know what I mean? I think that's a very sensible way of looking at it because I agree with it fully. Okay. 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 litter, you're unpatriotic, they basically use 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 to beautify America. It was to keep the train, this disposable packaging train going, right? Like, hey, everybody stop 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 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 wasn't working. And these companies are like, no, no, no, we are making 50 times more money with this disposable stuff because you guys are buying way more. 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 litter. 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 70s, some more of these bottle bills were 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 grape bottle for five cents,

which I also remember doing when I was a kid sometimes. Me too. And in 1974, 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 of the American can company, William F. May, called Bottle Bill Supporters Communist. Yeah. And this is when the EPA pulled out and a bunch of environmental groups pulled out of Keep America Beautiful and were like, oh, that's like the light was kind of shining in on them for the first time. Yeah. That like, oh, these guys aren't really environmentally conscious. This is strictly greenwashing for them. It was

the first greenwashing attempt and it was super successful too. Yeah. They spent $14 million over a five-year span in the early 90s to defeat a national bottle bill. So Keep America Beautiful does some great work, but it's, you know, you got to 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, it's bankroll by corporate interests. Yeah. But the people conducting these studies are actually like environmental engineers and their disinterested bodies. And so far 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 a very, like, I'm just writhing right here. I can't. I just want this to be clear. Like, should I keep America Beautiful or not? Right. But I don't because they are, they have had a huge effect on littering demonstrably, a big effect on reducing littering and teaching people not to litter. It's just, again, for their bottom line. So that's the problem. Right. And they are still the number one largest anti-litter organization on planet Earth. So there's something to be said for that. 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. And then, you know, we, I 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 PSA. Do you remember why we would have talked about that? I don't. Like 11 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 Iron Eyes 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 actor. Oh, that's a big one that people definitely at the time didn't know.

And that was problematic, not just because this guy was Sicilian, but that also the Native American that was being used in this ad, the very image of the Native American, was just totally co-opted by this corporate group to, again, shame you into not littering, for you to feel bad, not them to feel bad, for you to feel bad for littering. And it also, the other thing that I saw that was a big critique of is that, if you'll notice, like the Native American, Iron Eyes Cody, or the character doesn't speak. He's spoken for by a narrator. And so he stands mute, which I saw as a testament to his powerlessness. Yeah. I mean, if you don't know what we mean, 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 Cayuga River in Ohio. I know it wasn't there, but it couldn't have been any more industrial with this sort of war chant kind of music playing in the background. It was kind of wrong on 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 shoreline. 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 of fast food. It's so much food. It's like, did

no one eat anything out of that bag? Yeah. And then a single tear once you see his face. Yeah, they panned up and his face is there and he's crying. Which may have been fake as well, right? Yeah. I think it was a glycerin concoction. So, yeah, what's not great under today's, in today's view, was like award-winning and ground breaking back in 1971 when that ad came out. And it had an effect. It had a huge effect. The ad council, who helped produce that PSA, 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. It ran forever too. Yeah. I can't remember 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 71 and it was, I remember seeing it throughout the 1970s. So, 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 answer is, 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, 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 Woodsy the Owl. Did you see that

clip I sent you, the ad? Yeah. I used to love Woodsy. Sure. How could you not? Give a hoot, don't pollute. Yeah. I got a Woodsy sign at my camp. Oh, that's cute. Yeah. I like the 70s version. Have you seen the updated version? No, 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 buff-ness that is 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. And so now there are all kinds of fines for both littering and the most reprehensible kind of littering, which is dumping. One of my favorite bands of all time, Granddaddy, has a song called

Broken Household Appliance National Forest, where Jason Lytle is a big outdoorsy guy. And their lyrics are about a forest just littered with appliances and animals living in them. And it's not like it's obviously admonishing tongue and cheek, but he's sort of like, it's got a nice home for a bunny inside of an oven door and that kind of thing. But dumping is just, there's a spot in my neighborhood where people will still dump stuff. 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 500 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 in Tennessee, you can get up to six years for dumping. 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 a pretty stiff fine. I think in Maryland, it's like $30,000. And of course, it should be that way. 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 J walking. Remember we talked about in the short stuff episode that J walking tickets are not,

not distributed equally among the races in America. Yeah. Same deal with littering, right? Yeah. Same thing. So 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. But they should take your car. Yeah. I mean, I guess if you drove your car to the woods and had 500 pounds of McDonald's packaging in your, in your car, they could take your car. We do have a lot of statistics though. And Dave gave us statistics from two years, 2009, and then 2020. And we'll explain why in a second. But in 2009, their big study said that there were 51.2 billion pieces of litter

along America's roadways alone, just on the side of the road. That's more than 6,700 pieces of litter per mile. And 90% of that was less than four inches. And I think 38% 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 are far and away the most littered thing. But cigarette butts are far and away the most littered part of tobacco products too. Yeah. And I think litter, cigarette butts are the last holdout for people who ordinarily wouldn't litter 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? Green Daddy would be so mad at you. I think people justify it. They don't want a lot, well, a lot of cars don't even have ashtrays anymore. Like I think you have to request one. And people don't want them 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. I feel quite bad about it. You have made your pinnets though, my friend. Huh? You have paid your pinnets. I probably threw fast food out the window when I was 14, you know. Shameful. We're more evolved. Well, thanks for letting me off the hook. I feel great now. You're like you threw fast food trash out the window. You monster. In what year? 1986.

Hundreds of thousands of cigarette butts. We'll talk more about the negative effect of tobacco products. But the other year Dave Sinis was 2020. And it said, oh, look, things have decreased by 54% from 2009. And cigarette butts even dropped from 18 billion to 5.7 billion. I believe that. The caveat, well, a lot of people, not as many people smoke, so that makes sense. But it was also during the pandemic, like the height of the pandemic. Right. 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 conduct a study like that and not think like, oh, these

results are going to be skewed. Everybody in the middle of 2020 knew any data that came out of 2020 was going to be unusual. So they would be, hey, let's get out there and count the trash. Exactly. Let's show everybody that this disposable packaging thing is not a problem anymore. Because I hear them getting mad about it again. I wonder how they do that. Do they just count a certain number of miles in different places and then extrapolate it? So I know in the 2009 methodology, I believe they used the same one for 2020, but they selected 240 different roadway segments. Okay. Yeah. They did 300 feet by 15 feet segments. So basically right along the shoulder of the road for quite a ways, 240 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 butts 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 how they did it. And then they did the math and extrapolated to 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 67, 6,800 pieces of trash just sitting there. I mean, I know you already said it, but I think it bears repeating.

Great. If we wanted to break down percentages more, you have paper litter was about 21.9%. Part of the big problem there is 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. Sure. Sure. Instant litter though, if you're, that's a good TV character or movie characters, like what do you do for a living? I'm a copywriter for instant litter. Right. Feel great about that. Yeah. That sounds like a character from Reality Bites.

Yeah. Yeah. Plastic is another obviously big problem. They come in and third at 19%. That's surprising. Yeah. I mean, that's what, that it was that much or that little? Yeah. I thought that percentage was a little low. I thought it share would probably be more, wouldn't you? Yeah. Cause 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. Fritos wrapper, that's plastic, plastic film. Yeah. That's not foil. No. It's shiny Mylar 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 Frito balloon chump.

Almost 6% metal, about 4.5% glass. And then 4.2% is organic litter, which we should talk about quickly because a lot of people think, I can just throw my apple core and my banana peel out the window. And you shouldn't do that. No. This is something that like I could have guessed, 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, 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

that where the scientists who 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 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, apparently, if the other thought I had where it's like, well, you know, an animal would love this apple core,

they don't. And even if they do, they shouldn't really have it anyway, right? Yeah. And just a quick correction that she didn't actually bury it. She left it out 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. I was sitting 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. Instead of, you know, getting their regular natural organic

diet, like deep into the woods. Right. And it looks bad. You know, that black banana peel is going to be there for a while. Yeah, it's true. One of the other problems with litter, that the impact it 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 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's the mantra. Then you're all set. You've done everything right. Yeah, it's true. I mean, I'll never throw an apple core, an orange peel or a banana peel out anymore. And you know what I always say, there is no apple core to eat the whole thing. I know. Well, then I would throw out my uneaten portion of apple that I could eat if I were crazy. Throw away the stem and the seeds. Maybe a new apple tree will grow in its place. Yeah, I would love to grow an apple tree. I love apples. Should we take joshie apple seed? Mm hmm. Should we take a break? Mm hmm. All right, we'll be right back with litter. Well, now

when you're on the road driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck. Get stuff you should know. Stuff you should know. All right. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a

different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids relationships life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell

me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. The other thing that Keep America Beautiful does

is they try and figure out who these people are. They've done phone surveys in the 1960s, I think, 68 in a telephone survey. 50% of Americans said that they littered, 15% said they did in 2009. Take that for what it is. It's a phone survey. 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 in 2009, that same study, it was close to 10,000 disposal behaviors that they looked at. And 17% of those were litter behaviors. And 81% of those litter behaviors were on purpose. Yeah, they call them notable intent. Like I'm throwing it out the window. It's not something that flew out of my car by accident. Yeah, exactly.

And the way that they came up with notable intent was, was there like a garbage can in easy access, or was there like an ash can in easy access that was visible and the people saw it and just didn't use it anyway? There's a significant portion of people who litter just litter. They just do it anyway, even though there's plenty of like trash cans or ash cans right there. And then the other percentage, the other 15% of people who littered did it in the context of there not being a trash can nearby or slightly less acceptable that 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 what fell into context. And this is something that fell into context. And this is something you sent some other stuff about. Is

it people more likely to litter when they see other litter? Yeah, so like this place is dirty anyway. There's people that study this stuff, the psychology of littering. There's a, that, that study I found was, I think from 1990, if I'm not mistaken, and they, the social psychologists, um, Cialdini, Reno, and Calgreen, 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-littered 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. Yeah. 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's sense of responsibility to not violate that norm themselves. Like it, it ticks them off and makes them less likely to, to litter. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So if you,

if you have an already littered place, it's, it's going to attract more litter, 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 toward the stadium. And there was one part where they funneled you through what I guess was our Marta, our subway systems property. And so there were people there who were like, you can't take this through there. And everyone was like, Oh geez. And there were probably 1200 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. Sure. Litter to it. Yeah. And also everyone, you know, power drinking at the end, like a bunch of dopes. Right. But that can't waste a half 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. Yeah. 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 out. Yeah, exactly. But this is before they had the big prominent trash cans.

Like they had small, you know, slender little trash cans. 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. Right. And you were like, oh, what's that doing here? And if they said like, sorry, we're not cleaning up your, we're not your parents. Yeah, there's like a poorly handmade sign from somebody that says this office is not your parents house. You got to do your own dishes. I was always good in movie theaters because I've always had a guilt of and Hodgman talks about it a lot as being aware of the work you leave for others.

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 bag that they have to clean up then. It's like, it's fine. But people 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. No. Who knows? I don't know. You just thought I was weird. But the, I think to answer your question though, based on the studies I've seen, the more litter you found in a movie theater, the more likely you'd be to just litter on top of it. Oh, 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, the perfect storm of non-littering from what I saw. Right. Yeah, yeah. But I have one more thing, Chuck, about the, that, that 2009 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 23 people littering. Or no, they observed like almost 2000. I can't remember what the, what the point was. No, no. Okay. I'm sorry. I got this. You ready? Yeah. 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 23 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 23 people said, no, I have not littered in the last, through the last month, even though this, the study 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, I don't know. What'd you say, sir? Nothing, nothing. To button up the cigarette butt thing, 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 get made into a bird's nest and it's poison. There was a researcher that did an experiment where they put one cigarette butt in a gallon of water and that was enough to kill half of the fish inside, 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 butt once a full cigarette's been smoked through it. Yeah. Yeah. Kills the fish. Kills half of them. So if you're the person with the Keep America Beautiful sticker on your car and you're throwing your cigarette butts out the window so you don't like the smell, just do a little soul searching. Dave turned up a company called Green Butts that has come up with truly compostable cigarette butts made of like manila hemp and flax and I think cotton. And they have it so ready that tobacco companies 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 guess 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 two. We have a program in our neighborhood, like an official program where neighbors get together like once a month and do it. And I donate my pickup truck to haul the trash away. And we pick stuff up on our walks all the time and the Swedes invented something called plogging, which is where you take a bag with you when you jog and pick stuff up. So, you know, pick stuff up if you can. I do that sometimes.

I take a little baggy with you on a walk. Yeah. More like a grocery bag. And I think there's still bottle deposit laws here and there too, right? Yeah. There's like 10 states that have it, which I mean, that's good. That's definitely a start. 10 states in Guam. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to leave you guys out. I mean, that's a good way to go. It's getting back to reusable and the fact that structures 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 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. Yeah. Because even if you don't mean to litter, sometimes it just happens. Like if you're a garbage truck or you're hauling your trash in the back of a pickup truck and some of it flies out, like 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 Drive. That's litter. I pulled up to a stoplight and the people were honking at me next door. I was like, what? They said, you dropped your tree back there. I went, oh, thank you.

You're like, well, go get it. I'll be, I'll wait here. Yeah. It was, in Memorial Drive is busy and fast. Yeah. What a way to go out getting hit by a car, pulling my old Christmas tree out of the street. Merry Christmas. There's the headline, little known podcaster dies trying to do the right thing. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Don't litter. That's it. It's a good one to wrap it up with Chuck. And since Chuck said don't litter, it's time for a listener mail. I'm going to call this a funny bone follow up. Okay. And this is from, who was this from? A doctor of physical therapy. Okay. Has answers. Chuck has said when he goes

to get a massage and the massage therapist rolls something up and down, then his hand curls up, and you were thinking this had to do with a nerve. Actually, it's because of a length tension relationship with the flexor 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 to the tendon when you want to bend your wrist. This also means however that when enough pressure is applied to the muscle belly. Love that term. Yeah, that's great. It causes a motion 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. It's because they're very different. Cubital

tunnel syndrome refers specifically to the ulnar nerve being entrapped by tissues or swelling within the cubital tunnel, whereas tennis elbow is actually an injury to the extensor tendons in your forearm. It is a tendonitis. I see. That would explain that for sure. Samantha, the doctor of physical therapy in northern Wisconsin. Muscle belly, am I dreaming? Is that really what was just said? Muscle belly, our new band. That's pretty great. You'd be like Daft Punk, just the two of us. That's right. You'd be muscle, I'd be belly. Or like sparks. Yeah, I love how the sparks you are now. I was just listening to number one song in heaven album before this. I think they're touring now again soon. They are as a matter of fact,

Chuck and they're coming to Atlanta. You going? I don't believe we're going to 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 stuffpodcastsatihartradio.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. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart Podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help

and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas

are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.