Otterford Parish Litter Pick 6

Our 6th Parish Litter Pick. Come and join us - meet at the Parish Hall in Bishopswood (TA20 3RS) at 9.30am. Pick for a couple of hours, then back to the hall for a hot drink and a bacon/veggie roll. If you are free in the afternoon, help sort out recycling. You don't have to live in Otterford to help keep this part of the Blackdown Hills AONB beautiful. OTTERFORD PARISH LITTER PICK - 6 MARCH 2016 # Our thanks to Whitbread plc (who own Costa Coffee) for the donation of litter-pickers and hoops # 24 Pickers (and 2 Base Team) collected 64 sacks of litter, 5 tyres, 7 hubcaps and miscellaneous items # After sorting, 604 drinks cans, 653 plastic bottles, 98 glass bottles, and assorted metal were recycled If our Litter Picks were episodes of Star Wars …….. Episode 6 would be ‘Return of The Litter Lout’. At the end of the Last Pick in November 2015 we wondered if we had turned the corner, after collecting much less litter than ever before.

Now we know that Episode 5 was ‘A False Hope’. Prior to this Pick the Parish Council considered whether we should ‘Clean For The Queen’ – a project encouraging volunteers to undertake a major national clean up to commemorate the Queen’s 90th birthday in 2016. Whilst any additional litter picking is commendable and to be encouraged we felt the hype, the celebrities/politicians photo-shots, and the lack of practical (and preferably financial) support meant it was not for us. Rather we will continue to pick for us! Yet again almost every road in the Parish was cleared – and we have offers from various people who will collect litter from everywhere else in the coming days. In two hours our twenty four volunteers – including eight new faces - collected 64 sacks of litter, and a range of other things including seven hub caps, five car tyres, rubble, old carpet, odds and ends of scrap metal, and redundant road signs. This is a considerable increase on the 38 sacks we collected at the last Pick in November 2015. What is staggering is that just about all this litter has accumulated since that last Pick 4½ months ago. As ever, a substantial amount of litter came from food wrappings - the largest single amount again was from McDonalds (including 53 drinks cartons) – but we also had wrappers and cups/bottles from Burger King, KFC, Tesco, Sainsburys, Morrisons, Asda, Waitrose, Pepsi Cola, Costa Coffee, and Marks & Spencer. Still on ‘as ever’, we collected more Coca Cola Group plastic bottles and drinks cans than from any other manufacturer. We also continued to collect a noticeable number of Red Bull cans. and Lucozade bottles. And two changes this month. We picked up 127 plastic milk bottles – mostly the 4 pint size. Who on earth drives to the Blackdown Hills to dump milk bottles? And a sudden surge in Tesco Apple drink cans – 47, all found in just one location! Who, locally, likes Tesco apple drink? One final statistic – 63 different people have participated in our 6 litter picks, an average of 25 per Pick. The Parish Council now owns sufficient litter-pickers, vests and hoops to kit out all volunteers – thanks to major donations from Litteraction and Whitbread plc. We have bought kitbags, sharps boxes, dog waste bags and first aid kits – and continue to fund the after Pick refreshments. We are grateful to McDonalds Taunton and Taunton Deane Borough Council who, in the past, have loaned us some equipment and continue to supply refuse sacks. But we are disappointed not to have received a reply from Screwfix Taunton and McDonalds Taunton regarding sponsorship for additional items – now principally some temporary road signs and a litter bin for the layby at the top of Corfe Hill. And the Coca Cola company told us we 'do not fit within its overall community investment priorities' when we sought grant funding. According to their website, one of the four issues it focuses on is ‘community recycling’!! Our next Parish Litter Pick is on Saturday 26th November 2016 - meeting at the Parish Hall, in Bishopswood (TA20 3RS) at 9.30am..