St. Charles Parish residents still have time to sign up for this year’s Trash Bash, the parish’s annual volunteer cleanup aimed at reducing litter and beautifying neighborhoods.
The event will take place Saturday from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., as residents spread out across the parish to collect roadside litter and improve public spaces as part of the parishwide initiative. Registration remains open through the day of the event, and residents can sign up online through the parish website.
Necessary equipment, including pickup sticks, gloves and trash bags, will be distributed at the Edward A. Dufresne Community Center before Saturday’s cleanup. Students seeking volunteer service hours for school or church can earn them by participating in Trash Bash. Certificates are available upon request at the check-in table at the Trash Bash celebration.
Grayson Touchard, a spokesperson for the Parks and Recreation Department, said Trash Bash participants may choose any area of the parish they would like to clean. Volunteers can also collect No. 1 plastic bottles and aluminum cans for recycling.
Once volunteers finish, they can leave filled trash bags along the roadside for collection and head to the Edward A. Dufresne Community Center in Luling for a post-cleanup celebration.
The gathering will include food, music, activities and raffle prizes for participants. Wetland Watchers will also be on site with live animals, giving attendees the chance to meet some of the region’s “swamp friends.”
The celebration is open to volunteers who participate in the cleanup and submit their tracking sheet afterward.
Touchard said the event gives residents the opportunity to make a direct impact on their environment.
“It’s about promoting responsibility, protecting our natural spaces, and creating a cleaner, safer parish for everyone to enjoy,” she said. “Seeing the difference before and after the cleanup, and knowing our residents played a role in that, is always rewarding.”
The Trash Bash is hosted in partnership with Keep Louisiana Beautiful’s Love the Boot Week, Louisiana’s largest litter cleanup effort.
At last year’s Trash Bash, 782 volunteers collected 447 bags of trash from public spaces. The lieutenant governor’s office recognized the parish with the Outstanding Recycling Award after volunteers collected 634 plastic bottles and aluminum cans.
