The Great British Spring Clean, part of the national Keep Britain Tidy Campaign, has been running for a few years now. In addition to the routine litter collection completed by our team of volunteers throughout the year this now annual focus exercise is making a great effort to rid our lanes of litter. Our cleanup took place over the last few days.
The task never ends, dumping litter has become a national pastime, and clearing it has predominately fallen to volunteers. The recent government plan to enlist the ‘tossers’ to help clear it up has a couple of flaws. Firstly the process to apprehend the flytippers lies untested; the previous approach having met with pitiful success over the years, and secondly let’s hope the tossers ‘chain gang’ are equipped with a different coloured hi viz jacket to separate them from our team of volunteers.
In 2019, over half a million people took part throughout the UK collecting just under a million bags of litter. The irony is an estimated 84% of what was collected is recyclable. And of course just under a million plastic sacks were consumed
Saturday saw a record turnout of 13 residents and friends/family to tackle The Abbe’s Walk.
Our thanks go to Shaun’s ability to dive into ditches, and the use of his extender pole to retrieve hard-to-reach detritus.
The other favourite spot for “hiding” litter is by the bridge over the stream further down the lane:
A smaller team tackled Burghwallis Lane and Burghwallis Road on Tuesday and Wednesday. Fortunately, we did not need great numbers to clear these two roads, though there was still the usual collection of nitrous oxide cylinders, bags of cannabis compost, as well as cans, bottles, takeaway packaging etc.
So, after a total of over 40 man-hours of effort, we collected 41 sacks of bagged rubbish, on top of the planks of wood, and other items too big to bag up, and several sheets of corrugated asbestos.
A big thank you to all who participated, and to CDC, for the supply of additional equipment, and for the collection and disposal of the resulting rubbish.
Of course, we don’t wait for annual campaigns to galvanise us into action. This is an on-going exercise as far as we are concerned, and we are also grateful to village residents who help to keep our environment litter free all year round.
To typify the mentality of the fly tipper, whilst the Great Clean up team were clearing Abbe’s Walk and Burghwallis Road some Bogans were dumping a load of waste at Scorcher Hills Lane.