Autumn is here - along with the trash

Mersea Island Nr Colchester. Focussing on preventing litter ending up in the sea and protecting and enhancing the environment

The Green Army has been founded to tackle litter along rural routes around the villages of Harrold, Odell and Carlton in Bedfordshire. Roadside verges leading in and out of these villages will be targeted in a bid to keep our surrounding countryside clean and beautiful, and to provide safe habitats for local wildlife. Any public footpaths or bridleways will also be freed of litter as the need arises. If you are a local resident interested in joining this group please get in touch!

Anstey Litterpickers are simply fed up with the amount of discarded McDonalds and KFC wrappers, beer cans, fag packets etc thrown out of car windows along the lovely country roads around Anstey and Charnwood. We just want to do something about it!

Who are we? We are an environmental group undertaking planting in our village, litter picks, promoting reduction in Co2 and smart driving, and working with the local community to make our village a litter free area. We deliver over 1700 newsletters around our village promoting our message and work with Thringstone Primary School and the local brownie group various events, including a scarecrow festival in June 2011 which brought together all sectors of the community . We held another scarecrow event, in conjunction with Thringstone Methodists, on Saturday 6th July 2013. Our chairman litter picks daily, and is helped by others who litter pick regularly. We try, where possible, to recycle items which can be recycled. We petitioned for extra recycling bins in our village and now have two tin and plastic bottle recycling points and a glass recycling point, and are currently asking for the council to consider ways of recycling acceptable items put in roadside litter bins. Between February 2013 and the end of February 2014, we removed 1,958 bags of litter from the village and woodlands, which we feel is a staggering amount. We have also worked with other groups on environmental issues in the village, and were part of the steering group that saw Thringstone Youth Club win the Children and Young People\\\\\\\'s Green Footprints Award in 2011 for their mural project. We have taken over several flowerbeds and previously untidy and unused areas in the village for planting and offer historical and environmental walks around the village. Please see our website which is www.friends-of-thringstone.org.uk for further details on our group, plus details on our constitution, health and safety policy, equal opportunities policy, parental consent statements and volunteer expenses statement. You can also see on that site details of all our publications. What have we done? In 2009 we won the NW Leicestershire Green Footprints Awards, were awarded an outstanding achievement certificate by East Midlands In Bloom in 2009, and won a gold and silver in the village achievement awards run by the Rural Community Council. In 2010 and were finalists in the Community and Partnerships category of the NWLDC\\\\\\\'s Green Footprints Awards and again in 2013. In 2011 we won The Queen\\\\\\\'s Award for Voluntary Service, something of which we are very proud, especially since 2011 was the European Year of Volunteering,. In 2015 we won the Big Tidy Award at the Keep Britain Tidy Jubilee Awards 2015. In 2021 we won the Leicestershire Live Environmental Heroes Award and also won the Community Organisation Award 2021 with Leicestershire Community Champions. We have a facebook page, and we are also on twitter - address is @Thringstone2. In 2019, our chairman was awarded a British Empire Medal for service to Thringstone and in September 2019, her dog, who accompanied her on all her litter picks, was awarded a commendation from the PDSA.

The A3057 and A3090 are usually full of litter and the verges are only cleared infrequently - and in many places never. In the Summer it does not look so bad because of the grass - but come the Winter! A number of more minor roads are also left with litter because it would seem that Test Valley Borough Council only cares, if at all, about Andover and Romsey. The aim is to get Test Valley BC to do what it is required to do under the EPA for the district as a whole and not just the main urban areas.

Beach Clean Up Help keep Red Car Beach Clean

Winchester Litter Pickers were founded in 1995 when three people decided to do more about the litter problem in and around the City. Currently (December 2021) we have over 40 active volunteers and many more supporters. We think it is especially important to give visitors to Winchester a good impression of the City. During the summer months we tidy the Outer Close of the Cathedral daily in the late afternoon and on Monday mornings throughout the year we clear the approaches to the railways station. Twice a month on Wednesday mornings we clear suburban areas in turn, concentrating on the streets and open spaces near the local shops and in particularly bad black spots. We are very much into recycling, recovering the cans, glass and plastic bottles we collect wherever practicable. We are also keen to limit the damaging effects of plastic litter. We are a very sociable group and normally meet up for hot drinks and chats after our litter picks. We also have a very popular annual party. Anyone who would like to join us is invited to call Eddie Woodnutt on 01962 863047 or Jan Wood on 01962 853712 or email us on tidywinchester@gmail.com. You are very welcome to join any of our litter picks as a non-member, but please let us know in advance, so that we can bring along a spare litter grabber if necessary.

The group now has over 100 members. It organises monthly litter picks, and members also litter pick in their own local areas.

An important part of our work is with young people. We have met with Junior schools, Brownies and Cubs, and talked about the reduction of litter and recycling.

We liaise with other environmental groups in the area, particularly those with similar aims to ours and we work closely with the local Borough Council.

We have a website:- www.sandbach-cleanteam.co.uk

We are a group of local residents who are keen to make Palmers Green a beautiful and thriving place to be. We have ad hoc litter picks which we organise through our volunteer WhatsApp group. We also have an annual spring clean event in the high street. If you would like to join please send us an email!

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