Keep Baton Rouge Beautiful hosted its annual International Coastal Cleanup, locally known as Beach Sweep, on Saturday near the University Lake and downtown near the Louisiana Art and Science Museum.
Gwen Emick, executive director of Keep Baton Rouge Beautiful, said the event is hosted to clean up the oceans and waterways across the world. Though Baton Rouge doesn’t have any beaches, she said the city does have a lot of water.
Emick said trash thrown on the roads ends up in the Mississippi River, and this event should remind people it’s not acceptable to litter.
Emick said she noticed Baton Rouge has looked cleaner recently, compared to previous years. On a scale of one to four, with one being the least amount of litter and four being the greatest, Baton Rouge scored a 1.7 on what she called the litter appearance index.
East Baton Rouge resident Pern Lundell said he runs the University Lake three times a week. He said he doesn’t notice much garbage along the lakes when he is exercising.
“The level of trash I see here is nowhere near as much as I have seen in other cities,” Lundell said.
Emick said people are aware of the litter issue and that Baton Rouge needs to have an attractive appearance to keep tourists coming back.
“Litter is such a deterrent to tourism,” Emick said.
Emick said she expected 75 to 100 volunteers at each location to collect litter. To measure the amount of litter collected, the group planned to count the number of full bags.
A full bag weighs approximately 17 pounds. She said in previous years they have collected 3,000 to 5,000 pounds of garbage. This year’s collection numbers were not yet available.
At the 2011 Beach Sweep, volunteers collected 461 bags of trash and removed 9,220 pounds of trash from the Baton Rouge waterways, according to the Keep Baton Rouge Beautiful website.
“Someone has to clean it up. If it’s not volunteers, it’s the city government, which costs taxpayers money,” Emick said.
Debra Smith, Baton Rouge resident, said this was her first time volunteering for the Beach Sweep. She said she wanted to help the community because the University’s lakes are an area full of friendly people and are a beautiful place to be.
