Love the Boot Week will be April 5-13

During Love the Boot Week, April 5-13, Keep Louisiana Beautiful (KLB) will partner with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana (Louisiana Blue) with a goal of communicating that a clean and beautiful Louisiana is a healthy Louisiana.
"Seeing how litter negatively impacts community health and wanting to do something about it, Louisiana Blue has been a part of Love the Boot Week since its inception," said Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser. "With their support, we are putting litter in its place and making Louisiana a cleaner and greener place to call home."
Ways litter affects our environment, and our physical and mental health include but are not limited to:
•The CDC identifies the condition of a person's environment as a social determinant of health. In other words, the condition of a person's environment is a non-medical factor that can influence health outcomes. Litter negatively impacts the condition of a person's environment.
•Litter is hazardous to our health and the health of our environment. Toxic chemicals from plastic pollute our waterways and soil. Birds and marine life become entangled in litter and ingest plastic remnants, which eventually end up in our food supply.
•In addition to being ingested by wildlife and polluting the environment, littered cigarettes can lead to life-threatening wildfires.
•Litter can clog drains, causing street flooding. This leads to the formation of mosquito breeding pools and mosquitoes can carry and transmit diseases.
•Water collected in waste tires and other illegally disposed debris also creates a breeding ground for mosquitoes.