Important: Litter can be contaminated, so we have put together some information to help you handle it safely. Please click on this link to have a read through our Health and Safety Guidance before you go out litter-picking.
Important: Litter can be contaminated, so we have put together some information to help you handle it safely. Please click on this link to have a read through our Health and Safety Guidance before you go out litter-picking.
We have found out about a very deserving cause in Bournemouth. St Peter's Church is a beautiful church right in the centre of Bournemouth. It has a lot of history there and is the burial place for Mary Shelly, the author of Frankenstein. Due to this, the grave yard has a lot of visitors and is on TripAdvisor as #19 of the "things to see in Bournemouth". Unfortunately most of the grave yard is very overgrown and a lot of the old graves are totally obscured by the undergrowth. SO, what are we doing? Bennett's Community Crew are going to go and start clearing the overgrown graveyard so that the visitors can actually appreciate the beauty of it. We arranged to meet at 10am the day of our event in the car park of the church. I arrived first and unpacked my van which was full of all of the equipment that we needed for the day including spades, forks, loppers as well as gloves for everyone and a wheelbarrow. By 10am everyone else had arrived and we were ready to start work.
So the team were: Tony the franchisee, Wez the operations manager, myself(Sarah) the environment manager, John & Dave our maintenance guys from Basingstoke Leisure Park, Dylan from Basingstoke Brighton Hill, Craig from Basingstoke Town Centre, Vicki from Winchester, Karen & Ben from Swaythling, Tibbs & Atlanta from Eastleigh, Erik from Ower, Callum from Picket Post, DJ from Christchurch, Kieron from Boscombe and Kayleigh from Bournemouth. Kayleigh also brought along some tools that were kindly donated by Wilko’s the day before. We were also joined at various points during the day by Professor Dr. Sara Crabtree-Parker & her husband Professor Jonathan Crabtree-Parker from Bournemouth university as well as the rector The Rev’d Dr. Ian Terry. The guys from Leisure Park got stuck in straight away with their power tools, making huge inroads very quickly. The rest of us followed behind pulling up bramble roots, rhododendron roots as well as clearing rubbish that was uncovered. We also spent a lot of time pulling up ivy roots as well as teasing the ivy off of graves and tree’s. We uncovered a bike(minus the saddle) as well as various items of clothing, bottles, cans and an old wooden box! Tony was in charge of the wheelbarrow and was kept very busy taking loads of cuttings down to the every growing pile in the car park. By midday we had been joined by the mayor, Councillor Eddie Coope, in his day job of landscaping contractor who took away 2 truckloads of cuttings which we were very grateful for. We also had a visit from Eddie from the council environmental department who cleared away a load of used needles that we had found. By late afternoon we started clearing up and packing away and stood back to look at what progress we had made on our first attempt. We had uncovered a lot of graves, some that you couldn’t even read the inscription’s on them before and opened up a big area which we hope will help to discourage some of the anti-social behaviour that happens in the graveyard. We will be returning in September to have another crack at the whip. .
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Here at CleanupUK, we want to help you to take LitterAction! Wherever you live in the UK, forming your own community litter-picking group will help to keep your community safer, more friendly and free of litter. It’s lots of fun too. Why not muck in and join us?
