Purdue graduate keeps Indianapolis streets clean
Ryann Davis showed up at the Duke’s Indy parking lot wearing a walking boot, a neon green vest and a smile.
It was a crisp November morning, and Davis was helping her Keep Indianapolis Beautiful colleagues organize around two dozen volunteers who were about to walk from the honky-tonk’s lot to the Raymond Street bridge and pick up litter along the east bank of the White River.
Davis manages KIB’s residential Clean Neighborhood program and went out to Duke’s with a bum foot to lend a hand to KIB’s Molly Creech, who was running the waterway clean up.
Even with an injured foot (Davis was at a Lil Yachty concert and someone in the crowd jumped and landed on it) she geared up with multiple gloves and a grip extender to walk along the White River and pick up trash.
Davis has been with KIB for about a year but has always been interested in the environmental field. She studied biochemistry at Purdue University and worked on a biodegradable glitter project to reduce microplastics getting into the natural world.
“Getting into those issues, I got really interested in Keep Indianapolis Beautiful and their mission to help people and nature thrive,” Davis said.
Summer Keown, director of KIB’s Clean Neighborhood program, said she loves working with Davis.
“She works so hard and is so dedicated to her job and to the community,” Keown said. “She’s very thoughtful about community outreach and looking to see what neighborhoods and communities we haven’t looked at as much.”
Davis’s efforts reaching out into the community have built up the program’s Adopt-A-Block initiative.
Adopt-A-Block is a volunteer-based program where Indy residents sign up to be captains and pick up litter along the designated block.
With only a year of work under her belt, Davis has helped build that program from 623 captains to more than 1,000 captains across Indianapolis. Keeping everything organized is a big task.
“Ryann communicates with all 1,000
Adopt-A-Block captains regularly to see if there is anything we can do to help, answer questions or connect them with different city department if they need something specific,” Keown said.
Davis said her strong scientific background and creative perspective have really helped her be strong in her role at KIB. She approaches the litter problem from a scientific point of view, using data to show impact and creating educational and promotional materials that communicate and raise awareness about litter.
Yet her passion to help extends beyond spreadsheets and pamphlets.
At the White River cleanup, Davis was walking under the bridge when a volunteer came up with a broken grip extender. Without missing a beat, Davis pulled up the gripper’s end, untangled the little pinchers, and the volunteer was back in business.
Davis believes in building up the community. She wants to show people they are not alone, that there are likeminded people to lean on and help uplift each other.
“We hear a lot about how there is no one around me doing this,” Davis said. “I think it’s really important for individuals out in the community to know there are other people who share their values and want a pollution-free Indy.”
So Davis thinks of ways to make litter clean ups bigger and helps individual captains build up their community and facilitate connections.
It’s not an easy task to figure out how effective all of this work is and much trash KIB and its army of volunteers collects each year, but Davis is leaning on her scientific background to try to come up with ways to show the organization’s impact.
Davis has taken big strides in short time at Keep Indianapolis Beautiful, but she hasn’t stopped looking at the horizon for what’s to come.
It’s easy to calculate a big, organized cleanup like the one at the White River. Davis communicates with the landfill each time after they haul the trash away and gets the weight. The difficult part is the captains. The Adopt-A-Block program doesn’t require them to document how much litter they collect, leaving questions such as: How much does an average bag of litter weigh? It’s hard to say, but Davis is working to figure it out.
Even while tackling what must be hundreds of emails and phone calls each week, approving new captain applications and continuously learning about litter, Davis is updating maps and writing newsletters and tackling all things trash in the city.
“She balances a lot,” Keown said. “I’m so glad that she applied at KIB, and she’s been working with us for this year and I’m really excited to see going into this second year what she will accomplish.”
Karl Schneider is an IndyStar environment reporter. You can reach him at karl.schneider@indystar.com. Follow him on Twitter @karlstartswithk
IndyStar’s environmental reporting project is made possible through the generous support of the nonprofit Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust.