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Keep America Beautiful’s actions have been criticized as greenwashing. The organization’s narrow focus on littering and recycling diverts responsibility away from corporations and industries.[16]

Despite self-identifying as having Native American ancestry with the stage name of Iron Eyes Cody, Espera Oscar DeCorti was of Italian descent.[9] This sparked accusations of cultural appropriation and racial stereotyping.[17]

Heather Rogers, creator of the 2005 documentary film Gone Tomorrow. The Hidden Life of Garbage and book of the same name,[18] classifies Keep America Beautiful as one of the first greenwashing corporate fronts. She asserts that the group was created in response to Vermont’s 1953 attempt to legislate a mandatory deposit to be paid at point of purchase on disposable beverage containers and banning the sale of beer in non-refillable bottles.[19][20]

Keep America Beautiful’s narrow focus on litter, and its characterization of litter as a consumer created problem, is seen as an attempt to divert an extended producer responsibility from the industries that manufacture and sell disposable products to consumers who improperly dispose of the non-returnable wrappers, filters, and beverage containers.[18]

Elizabeth Royte, author of Garbage Land, describes Keep America Beautiful as a “masterful example of corporate greenwash”, writing that in contrast to its anti-litter campaigns, it ignores the potential of recycling legislation and resists changes to packaging.[21]

The tobacco industry developed programs with Keep America Beautiful that focused on cigarette litter solutions acceptable to the industry such as volunteer clean-ups and ashtrays, in lieu of smoking bans at parks and beaches.[22] The tobacco industry has funded Keep America Beautiful[22] and similar organizations internationally.[23]