N EWS LITTE R
TAKE IT ON: When real estate agent Jennifer Richardson felt the city was not doing enough to combat the proliferation of trash on its streets, she resolved to take matters into her own hands. That’s when she started Keep Tiger Town Beautiful.
Litter warriors How a local grassroots organization is working to improve Baton Rouge’s economic future by tackling trash.
STORY & PHOTOGRAPHY BY DILLON LOWE
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FIREARMS. BAGS OF ammunition. Hundreds upon hundreds of used needles. These are just a few of the more concerning items that have been recovered from the streets of Baton Rouge by the “litter warriors” of Keep Tiger Town Beautiful, a local group of activists that hosts community cleanups each day with a shared goal of creating a trash-free Capital City. The grassroots organization was launched in January 2021 by Jennifer Richardson, a local real
estate agent who was appalled by the conditions of an overgrown median on Essen Lane that harbored an exorbitant amount of litter— beer cans, cigarette butts, water bottles and the like. Because she felt the city was not doing enough to combat the proliferation of trash on its streets, she resolved to take matters into her own hands, and, soon after, the Keep Tiger Town Beautiful Facebook group was born. What began as a relatively small group of concerned residents has since exploded, with more than 5,300 Facebook members and a dedicated team of roughly 100 volunteers. “People came out from all walks of life,” Richardson says, recalling the first cleanup she organized. “Every race, every religion, every
political affiliation. As a community, we all came together for one thing, and we all got along. After it was over with, we became fast friends, and now we’ve been doing it for almost three years.” To date, the group has set up 150 public trash cans throughout Baton Rouge, cleaned out hundreds of clogged drains, and filled roughly 13,200 contractor-sized trash bags of litter. While a portion of the garbage recovered by Richardson and her team comes from “disrespectful” drivers and pedestrians, she says that the majority of what they retrieve is linked to the city’s homeless population—which appears to be growing.. On a single night in January 2023, the Louisiana Balance of State Continuum of Care in its point in time census counted
BUSINESS REPORT, November 2023 | BusinessReport.com
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