Fifty six years ago, on this day, April 20th, 1970,
“The GCMI began with a pilot recycling program in Los Angeles, launched on April 20, 1970, just two days before the first Earth Day. It set up eight collection centers at glass-container manufacturing plants in the Los Angeles area and cultivated interest in the southern California media by inviting journalists and camera crews to opening day events and supplying prepackaged ideas for feature stories. Offering a penny per pound for used glass containers that were brought in, the GCMI spread word of the program to “churches, colleges, schools, youth groups, civic and service organizations, Garden Clubs, PTA’s, ecology clubs” and other organizations, inviting them to bring in bottles and jars for recycling.”
(Conley, 2006,: 96)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 325ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that Americans had a conserver culture sort of, kind of, sort of until the 50s. And then you see jeremiads by people like Vance Packard, (the Waste Makers etc). And there’s real concern about the ongoing despoilation of America, its natural beauty, blah, blah, blah. And also there’s the Malthusian fear that resources are running out, so rather than reduce resource use and share equitably, which, of course, would be Dictatorial Communism, we will instead have recycling to make everyone feel better about themselves. And so it came to pass.
The specific context was that Earth Day was just about to happen. Earth Day was, in fact, huge.
What I think we can learn from this is that as per TS Eliot, we can only handle a little truth.
What happened next: Recycling became virtue signalling, a bit like ratifying the Kyoto Protocol or whatever, and acted as a kind of mitigation deterrence, or Meaningful Action. Deterrence, aka MAD. Oh, I like that Mutually Assured distraction – have to use that!
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
References
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Also on this day:
April 20, 1998 – National Academy of Sciences vs “Oregon petition” fraud
April 20, 2006 – David Cameron does “hug-a-husky” to detoxify the Conservative “brand”
April 20, 2009 – World has Six Years to Act, says Penny Sackett – All Our Yesterdays