GirlScouts& KeepLouisiana Beautiful
Find out how our organizations’ missions overlap and use KLB’s resources and programs to complement your troop’s activities.
Girl Scouts Eco Badges are designed to teach girls how to care for nature and help keep their environment beautiful, a goal shared by Keep Louisiana Beautiful (KLB). The requirements for Eco Badges are closely aligned with KLB’s Litter Free Louisiana Activity Book. This guide outlines opportunities to use the Activity Book in support of your Daisy, Brownie, or Junior troop’s Eco Badge requirements. The KLB Litter Free Louisiana Activity Book is a free resource available to your troop.
About Keep Louisiana Beautiful
Keep Louisiana Beautiful is a state program under the Office of the Lieutenant Governor and the Department of Culture, Recreation, & Tourism promoting personal, corporate, and community responsibility for a clean and beautiful Louisiana. KLB supports local communities through programs and resources for litter education, prevention, removal, enforcement, beautification, recycling, waste reduction, and sustainability initiatives. KLB is affiliated with the national organization, Keep America Beautiful, and is supported by a robust statewide network of Community Affiliates and University Affiliates. Learn more at KeepLouisianaBeautiful.org.
Connecting Our Missions
Girl Scouting’s mission is to build girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place. Girls Scouts prioritize leadership, sisterhood, and inclusion. Similarly, KLB strives to make our state a better place, and we do this through partnership building and encouraging citizens to be “leaders against litter.” Both organizations emphasize the importance of service and community, and we are passionate about protecting the natural environment.
Use Keep Louisiana Beautiful’s Activity Book While
Earning an Eco Badge
KLB has created a fun, engaging 12-page activity book for youth. Girl Scouts will learn about environmental stewardship, litter, and recycling. Included are activities that encourage reflection, problem-solving, and creativity. This activity book is free to download or order at www.keeplouisianabeautiful.org. Scan the QR code to get copies for your troop for free.
Daisy Eco Learner Badge
Badge Description: Nature gives us many gifts—now learn some ways to give back by protecting nature. Steps include:
1. Be prepared to protect nature before you go outdoors
2. Keep living things safe when you walk in nature
3. Learn how to protect nature from trash
Use the KLB Activity Book to help fulfill the badge requirements:
What is nature? (pg. 2 of the requirement pamphlet provided by Girl Scouts) When you walk outdoors, nature is the world around you! It’s the plants, animals, insects, mountains, deserts, ocean, stars, trees, clouds, and everything else not made by people. Draw the things in nature you love the most.
KLB Activity Book pg. 1 gives examples of wildlife found in nature in Louisiana. Girl Scouts could feature these characters in drawings or use them as inspiration.
Step 3: Learn how to protect nature from trash. (pgs. 6-7 the requirement pamphlet) Play “What Does Not Belong.” Look at the drawing on this page and put an X through the things that do not belong in nature. Why don’t they belong? What would you do if you saw these things along a trail? Then draw your own pictures of things in nature and not in nature, and have a friend or family member guess what does not belong.
KLB Activity Book pgs. 3-4 give examples of common littered items and how long they last.
Create a trash tale. Come up with a story that tells why it’s important to not leave trash in nature. Share your story with your friends and family. It could be a story about how a bear found food trash at a campsite and ate all of it. Or about a flower that was surrounded by trash and couldn’t grow. If you want, you can draw pictures for your story. For More FUN: Sit in a Daisy Circle with your friends and take turns sharing your “trash tales.”
KLB Activity Book characters and content may be used as ideas for a story. 2
Brownie Eco Friend Badge
Badge Description: Find out how to treat outdoor spaces with kindness and teach others how they can, too. Steps include:
1. Think of ways to help the outdoors
2. Observe outdoor spaces
3. Build a safe campfire
4. Take care of wildlife
5. Practice being kind
Use the KLB Activity Book to help fulfill the badge requirements:
Step 1: Think of ways to help the outdoors (pg. 2 of the requirement pamphlet provided by Girl Scouts) Take a hike. You’ve probably taken a hike before, but now get ready to take an eco hike! Buddy up with some friends and an adult to visit a place where you can hike. Before you go, make a plan and learn about the place where you’ll be going. Are there water fountains? Trash cans? What does the weather forecast say? Then, when you’re on your hike, practice different ways of caring for the environment: stay on walking paths or hiking trails, and leave no trash behind. Can you think of more?
Review the KLB Activity Book lessons before your hike.
Play a game or sing a song. When you teach something to others, it helps you remember it, too. And it’s fun! Make up a game or a song about different ways to take care of the environment when you’re outdoors, and teach it to younger girls—maybe a group of Girl Scout Daisies or your family members. Use the KLB Activity Book’s Scavenger hunt, Clean Path Maze, or Clean Up Time activity to help teach younger girls.
Design a poster. Make a poster showing all the ways you can care for the environment. Think about the different things you do outdoors and the places where you go—maybe you look at but don’t touch living things when you go to the beach, or make sure your soccer team leaves no trash behind after your games. Be as creative as you’d like! Share your poster with friends or family and talk to them about it. Is there a place where you can hang it up and see it every day?
Girls can use the Activity Book for ideas or cut and collage pieces onto their poster.
Step 4: Take care of wildlife (pg. 8 of the requirement pamphlet)
Be the best guest. Can you imagine what it would feel like to have a guest in your home who ate all your food, broke all your toys, and left trash all over the living room? Now imagine your favorite wild animal, and think of ways that humans can be disrespectful of its living space. (Maybe there are no flowers left for a rabbit to eat because people picked them all, or a deer is afraid to come to its favorite place in the woods because it hears loud music playing.) Draw or paint a picture of your animal and talk to your friends or family about how humans can treat its living space kindly when they are outside.
See the Clean Up Time activity on page 9. Find and circle the litter that doesn’t belong in the animals’ habitat. Then color the picture or use it as inspiration to draw your own.
Step 5: Practice being kind (pg. 10 of the requirement pamphlet)
Help improve an outdoor space. Do you know an outdoor space that could use a little love? Come up with some ideas for ways to leave an outdoor area better, then talk to an adult about how you could put your plan into action.
The KLB Activity Book
Junior Eco Camper Badge
Badge Description: Find out how to protect the environment when you go on a camping trip. Steps include:
1. Learn the Leave No Trace Seven Principles
2. Plan meals with the environment in mind
3. Prepare a minimal impact campsite
4. Have fun with Leave No Trace
5. Take a conservation hike
Step 1: Learn the Leave No Trace 7 Principles (pg. 3 of the requirement pamphlet provided by Girl Scouts) Make a Leave No Trace presentation for your troop or family. Prepare visuals or something to show what you’ve learned about each of the Principles. You can also ask your troop leader if you can do this as a group: Break into seven different groups or pairs. Each team will take one of the Leave No Trace Seven Principles to demonstrate how to use that skill while planning your camping trip.
Principle #3 - Dispose of Waste Properly.
Complete the activity on page 2 in the KLB Activity Book page 2 to learn the types of waste that become litter.
Share the Leave No Trace Seven Principles with a Daisy or Brownie group. Talk to them about how they can practice the skills at home or at school. (Leave No Trace -- Dispose of waste properly: Carry out what you carry in—never dump anything on a campsite or into a water source.)
Help the younger girls complete the activity on page 2 of the KLB Activity Book.
Step 2: Plan meals with the environment in mind (pg. 4 of the requirement pamphlet) Practice making a no-trash camp meal for your troop before you go on your trip. Make as little waste as possible. Avoid using anything in a can; use only fresh fruits and vegetables. For More FUN: Have a notrash meal contest with your troop. Break into groups, make a dish and see who leaves the least waste. Learn about the 5Rs of Waste on page 5 of the KLB Activity Book. This will help you reduce waste and better manage it.
Free copies of the Litter Free Louisiana Activity Book can be requested through Keep Louisiana Beautiful. Individual pages can also be downloaded. Activities are recommended for grades K-5. Scan the QR code to access, download, and order.
Other Ways Girl Scouts Can Get Involved with Keep Louisiana Beautiful
Love the Boot Week: This statewide litter removal and beautification effort happens every April. It’s a great way for Girl Scout troops to clean up and beautify their communities. Sign up at www.keeplouisianabeautiful.org in January.
Lessons for K-5: To support formal and non-formal educators, like troop leaders, in their efforts to teach their students about caring for their environment, KLB developed 10 lessons for grades K-5 – all in alignment with student standards. Manuals can be ordered and downloaded at keeplouisianabeautiful.org.
Activity Book: KLB created a colorful 12-page Litter Free Louisiana activity book teaching about environmental stewardship, litter, and recycling. Included are activities that encourage reflection, problem-solving, and creativity. This book can be used while your troop fulfills badge requirements.
Get Down & Clean Up Litter Supplies Program: You Girl Scout troop can check out litter clean-up supplies at their local library. Through the Get Down & Clean Up program, litter grabbers, safety vests, and trash bags are available at 141 public libraries. All you need is a library card to borrow the supplies and care for your community!
Read a book about litter: Read books about litter as a troop. “Harry the Snakebird” by Wendy Carbo is a beautiful book about a bird saved from litter. A copy is available at each public library. KLB also offers a reading list at www.keeplouisianabeautiful.org.
Contact jchappuis@keeplouisianabeautiful.org or call (985) 778-0067 if you have any questions. 5