The University of Louisiana at Lafayette is leading a seven-university initiative to engage students in sustainability research that will help reduce waste on campuses and in communities and waterways. The collaboration is part of Keep Louisiana Beautiful’s University Affiliate Program. Keep Louisiana Beautiful is a nonprofit based in Baton Rouge that was founded in 2000; it fosters programs to prevent litter, reduce waste and bolster recycling.
Those efforts are carried out with help from organizations, businesses, governmental entities and more than 260,000 volunteers. Keep Louisiana Beautiful brought colleges and universities into the fold last year. The foundation of its new university program is a five-year, $500,000 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grant awarded to UL Lafayette to create and launch the program. Keep Louisiana Beautiful is a sub-recipient.
UL Lafayette will spearhead distribution of the grant. Participating universities are Grambling State, Louisiana State, Nicholls State and Tulane universities, and the University of New Orleans and Xavier University of Louisiana. The grant will fund initiatives such as waste reduction education programs, strategic forums for the exchange resources and ideas to develop zero waste programs, sustainability projects and community service events.