Less than 24 hours after an LSU football game, there is little to no sign of the widespread tailgating that took place the day before. LSU’s Campus Sustainability department, an affiliate of Keep Louisiana Beautiful, is the group behind these pristine clean-ups.

After the LSU versus Vanderbilt football game last year, one ton of recyclables was collected from Tiger Stadium. That is 12,466 plastic bottles, 19,398 aluminum cans and 8.98 tons of other materials.

Keep Louisiana Beautiful is an organization with the goal of building and sustaining clean communities by reducing litter across the state.

Assistant Director of LSU Campus Sustainability Lisa Mahoney said that as an affiliate, the university receives grants to help with beautification projects, increased recycling receptacles and educational programs promoting sustainability and waste reduction.

“We just want to make sure we are helping prepare students when they leave LSU and they start their career and go into leadership positions, that they’re great environmental stewards,” said Tammy Millican, executive director of LSU facility and property oversight.

Last year, Campus Sustainability partnered with the Osprey Initiative, a specialty environmental contractor, to improve recycling efforts during gameday. Osprey made specialized recycling containers in Tiger Stadium and helped them “pick the bowl,” which meant gathering all of the recyclables they could find in the stadium after the game.

Landscape Services is in charge of placing all the recycling bins around campus and cleaning them up the next day. Mahoney, Millican and Campus Sustainability support the initiative to keep recycling. Millican said that she believes their success also comes from the efforts of tailgaters who seem to want to reduce their footprint.

“We certainly want to provide those services; we have them available,” Mahoney said. “They should be available for everybody on campus.”

Their recycling efforts are not limited to football season. Per Keep Louisiana Beautiful guidelines, the department is required to participate in at least four hours of training or education to remain an affiliate. They are also required to track outcomes of all their volunteer efforts and submit a yearly report to prove they met the requirements.

Included in their annual report is a survey where five student volunteers at five pre-determined areas around campus assess the amount and types of litter. This determines if it needs to change the number of recycling bins and trash cans.

During Love the Boot Week, one of Keep Louisiana Beautiful’s biggest annual beautification and sustainability efforts, Campus Sustainability and other organizations host a week of cleanups and other events.

This year’s Love the Boot Week ended with 540 tons of litter removed from all over Louisiana. That is more than double the weight of the Statue of Liberty, or around 2,454 Mike the Tigers.

As affiliates, they are asked to conduct three focus area activities: litter removal, prevention and recycling.

Mahoney said these efforts have been enhanced with grants. One grant helped them get 85 clear-stream recycle bins where people can see exactly what goes in. These help deter tailgaters from throwing contaminated items in with the recycling. Mahoney said someone is less likely to carelessly throw trash in a recycling bin if they can actually see it.

“It’s been super helpful to sort of enhance recycling for game day as being a Keep Louisiana Beautiful Affiliate,” Mahoney said.

Millican said that they also go to classrooms at LSU and the University Lab School to talk about sustainability and show the efforts made on campus.

“I think it’s great because our students arrived on campus with a lot of knowledge about sustainability and recycling,” Millican said.

On Campus Sustainability’s website, students can find recycling guidelines and other educational tools. The department loves hearing from students so they can make necessary changes like adding bins to a specific dorm or providing information on where certain disposable items go.

Campus Sustainability recently moved to dual-stream recycling, meaning cardboard and paper are collected together and bottles and cans together. Mahoney said they are gaining trust from the student body by showing that what they put in the bins is being recycled.

“There is a lack of trust from the student body on whether or not things are getting recycled,” Mahoney said. “This sort of gives us that autonomy, and we can show students firsthand not only through volunteering but online videos of how they are recycling on campus.”

Other ways students can get involved include reverse vending machines in the Student Union where students deposit plastic bottles into an automated machine, battery recycling options and film that can be recycled separately and turned into sustainable wood. The Student Sustainability Fund, which started in 2016, supports these projects on campus, Millican said.

Keep Louisiana Beautiful has been around for 25 years and was founded by former Gov. Mike Foster’s wife, Alice Foster. Community Engagement Affiliate Services Director Cabell Mouton said that after being a non-profit organization for most of its existence and a part of the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, it was absorbed by the Office of the Lieutenant Governor last year.

That move uplifted their work and protected them from getting defunded, Mouton said.

The organization has a network of 57 local affiliates across the state and thousands of other partners. Local government houses 44 affiliates and 13 are with universities. LSU was one of the first university affiliates.

Mouton said that Louisiana has a litter problem. According to a study in 2023, Louisiana spends over $91 million cleaning up litter. A big focus is beautifying the entryways into different communities with pretty signs and gardens.

A litter study showed that 80% of the areas maintained will stay clean, while areas with more litter are likely to accumulate more.

Keep Louisiana Beautiful exists to eliminate these problems by providing resources and tools to local communities. This includes money given to universities like LSU to help them with their recycling efforts and the installation of recycling receptacles.

“Keep Louisiana Beautiful is the largest and only statewide organization with a mission towards this effort of making a litter-free Louisiana,” Mouton said.

Find more information on Louisiana Beautiful here and Campus Sustainability here.