http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Keep_America_BeautifulKeep America Beautiful receives millions of dollars a year from dozens of corporations who either directly or through their trade associations are actively engaged in lobbying against environmental legislation such as bottle bills. A list can be found on the KAB website at
http://www.kab.org/site/PageServer?pagename=index . Some of the bigger funders include companies include PepsiCo, Philip Morris, Waste Management, Anheuser-Busch, Georgia-Pacific, Coca-Cola, Home Depot, McDonald's. Major PR and advertising firms also contribute money to KAB including DDB Worldwide, Omnicom Group, BBDO Worldwide, Fleishman-Hillard, and Ogilvy & Mather.
The Container Recycling Institute reports: "The most outspoken opponents to bottle bills are almost exclusively the big-name beverage producers. The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, Anheuser Busch, and their bottlers and distributers fight deposit laws at every turn. Retail grocers and liquor storeowners also oppose deposit laws, and in recent years, waste haulers and owners of materials recovery facilities who want the revenue from valuable aluminum cans have joined the opposition. ... Enter Keep America Beautiful. Though their name paints a rosy picture of environmentalism, Keep America Beautiful (KAB) promotes landfilling and incineration of waste, and refuses to accept bottle bills as a viable method of litter reduction. Why? Because KAB was founded by the very industries that find bottle bills a threat!"
Keep America Beautiful was founded in 1953 by group of businessmen from the beverage and packaging industries who were concerned that government would make them responsible for solving the litter problem by regulating their industries. Howard Chase was an early PR consultant to KAB and in the 1970's went on to become vice president and assistant to the chairman for public affairs of the American Can Company.
KAB's first campaign theme was “Every Litter Bit Hurts” and was supported by major environmental organisations.
In the early 1970s a new campaign was launched with the theme “People Start Pollution, People Can Stop It”. Environmentalists were not happy with the campaign theme and wanted KAB to focus on making producers responsible for packaging waste, but KAB's industry backers refused.
In 1974 KAB publicly opposed California's proposed bottle bill. However due to reactions that the organisation was self-serving, they decided to drop any official position on the issue. KAB changed their approach to promote alternatives to bottle bills instead.