A Conversation With the Smokies’ Litter Fighter

Lisa Bryant moved from Missouri to Tennessee five years ago when her fiancée, a swim coach, found a job in the Great Smoky Mountains. She’d worked in the newspaper business for more than 20 years at the time of the move, first as a general manager and then as director of marketing, and wanted to make a change. 

Since 2016, Bryant has been the executive director for Keep Sevier Beautiful. The nonprofit has been around since 2002, working to keep Sevier County—and especially the gateway to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park contained within it—litter-free and pristine, inspiring residents and visitors alike to be good stewards of their environment. 

What drew you to get involved with Keep Sevier Beautiful? 

It was amazing to me when I first moved here, the volunteerism in this area. Where I come from there wasn’t a lot of that. When I saw all the community service going on and how the volunteers came out to help, I felt like it was something I wanted to do and needed to do. 

What does Keep Sevier Beautiful do? 

We focus on four areas. We focus on litter prevention, we focus on waste reduction and recycling. We focus on beautification, and a big focus goes out to education as well. As far as litter prevention, we do a lot of litter cleanups around the area. We do a lot in the park, the Gateway to the Smokies—the spur that leads from Pigeon Forge into Gatlinburg. We do two big ones once a year and throughout the year. If people are having different areas of litter problems, we’ll give them the supplies they need. We also have litter-free construction sites. If a construction site is on the main drag, we’ll partner with them and they’ll sign an agreement to make sure their site stays litter free. We’ve got a big push coming this fall to work with the cabin rental companies covering their loads. We were able to secure covers for everyone in the area. 

How do you partner with the national park? 

At the main entrance into the park, we do a few litter pickups every year. This last one, we had 40 volunteers. When the park had the government shutdown a couple years ago and they couldn’t even work, we were the ones that went in and cleaned up the spur for them. That time we had 99 volunteers collecting 200 bags of litter. That tells you how bad just that one stretch of the road gets littered into the park. We’re also working with them on some volunteer education as well. 

What challenges did the pandemic present you? 

In the beginning, of course, we were completely shut down, so we weren’t able to do anything. But as we got into June 2020, we couldn’t move forward with a lot of stuff within the organization, but a litter pickup we could. It was a little harder to get volunteers out because of them not being sure of the pandemic, but we did it safely. We had gloves and masks and everything we needed to do. We got out and just did it. 

Why is this work important? 

I don’t think litter is something we’ll ever get totally away from, but as long as we can get the message out there about what it’s doing to the environment, if we can touch just one person, that will help. It’s that big push toward our tourists and the community itself as to what this litter is doing to the environment. Unfortunately we’re in a county where we can’t put a ban on a plastic bag, so the only thing we can do is just teach about the effects on the environment and hope that they will instill some good habits.