FRANKLIN, LA — On April 12, 2025, at 8:00 a.m., St. Mary Parish Government will host “Clean
Up the Courthouse Square!” as part of Love the Boot Week, Louisiana’s largest litter cleanup
beautification effort held every April. Love the Boot Week, taking place in all 64 parishes April
5-13, is organized by Keep Louisiana Beautiful and supported by the Office of the Lieutenant
Governor.
Help to clean up the area in and around the St. Mary Parish Courthouse Square! We’ve recently
completed our landscape project and now we need assistance in making the area even more
beautiful by removing all the visible litter from the area.
Litter is not a new problem for Louisiana. For decades, litter has become increasingly
detrimental to our communities, leading to a multitude of repercussions such as:
• Blight on natural areas, cities, towns, roadways, and waterways
• Death of wildlife due to polluted habitats
• Decline in quality of life in neighborhoods
• A negative impact on economic development, infrastructure, and tourism
• Flooding caused by storm drains clogged with litter and debris
Despite spending over $91.4 million in litter abatement each year, Louisiana is still experiencing
shocking levels of litter statewide.
“Picking up litter is important, but litter education is the primary goal of Love the Boot Week,”
says Susan Russell, Executive Director of Keep Louisiana Beautiful. “If we can all learn the
repercussions of litter and adopt behaviors to prevent it from happening in the first place, we
will see a cleaner, greener Louisiana.”
Following the conclusion of Love the Boot Week, Keep Louisiana Beautiful will release an
outcomes report summarizing the collective impact of the registered cleanup and
beautification events. This report will include the total number of events, volunteers, bags of
trash collected, pounds of trash collected, and other relevant statistics.
Volunteers for “Clean Up the Courthouse Square” can register via email
to: jdarce@stmaryparishla.gov or join via St. Mary Parish Government’s Facebook
event https://www.facebook.com/share/1DfcM8VFve/
Questions about this specific event should be directed to the event organizer, Jenny Darce,
Grants Administrator at jdarce@stmaryparishla.gov.
For more information about Love the Boot Week, visit www.lovetheboot.org or contact
info@keeplouisianabeautiful.org .