Reedswood

Mashamshire is an area of outstanding beauty. We are doing what we can to preserve it. We do litter collection along the lanes and footpaths in and around Masham - and we find loads of plastic. We are reducing the impact of micro-plastics on the diet of your children and grand-children! A Masham resident has kindly offered to pay for our group meeting coffees. Many thanks. As we go about Mashamshire we get many kind appreciations from folk that we meet.

Spurred on by the grass verges and parks around our lovely town regularly covered with litter, I decided to do litter picking walks in my free time. I have now formed this group, which is also on Facebook, to encourage others to help. I love where I live and aim to make others proud of their locality, so they think twice before chucking their rubbish. Don’t chuck it, bin it.

Our aim is to clean up local streets and countryside around the Crawley/Horsham/Copthorne areas. We are a new group and are keen for new volunteers.

We live here and care about our neighbourhood. It is up to us to look after it and make it a nice place to live. Our ground-zero is Sheerwater Recreation Area. This is a heavily used open space which many of us enjoy using. Because it is so popular it inevitably attracts a lot of rubbish - but this is an easy, and rewarding, problem to deal with. Once we've cleaned up the park on one of our regular n0 $#!+ sessions, then we extend our reach outwards along the canal and neighbouring areas to cover as much as we can.

At this time this is a one man group, but all help will be gratefully received.

We have 3 main aims ​ Improve the environment of Oadby, Wigston and South Wigston To work with Oadby and Wigston Borough Council to support the Borough's entry into East Midlands in Bloom Encourage and support community activities that will increase pride in our Borough

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.

We aim to clean up and maintain an urban nature reserve and ancient woodland right in the heart of a built up industrial area. Saltwells Woods and nature reserve is well used and well loved, and was recently saved from having a housing estate built on it, but sadly also neglected. With a renewed vigour now the woods are saved, we vow to make the area as CLEAN & GREEN as we possibly can.

Our local guide unit would like to arrange at least one, if not two litter picking days in our village per year. I would like to know where to get the picker sticks from and vests etc

We started as Weeley Wombleys in 2017 as so many residents had expressed their concerns about the amount of litter appearing everywhere, and we are now part of Weeley in Bloom. There are several take-aways in the area, and the detritus was mounting up so much Tendring District Council couldn\'t keep on top of it. We litter pick on the first Monday morning of the month, and there is usually a hard-core of about 15 residents who pick regularly. We also encourage residents to keep their frontages as clear of rubbish as possible and the area has seemed a lot tidier since we started. We have been into the local School wearing our home-made WeeleyWombley costumes, together with McDonalds (our Corporate partner), to encourage the primary school children to litter pick, and to take their litter home with them. McDonalds also very kindly have a member of staff litter picking around the Village practically every day, which is very much appreciated.