On Saturday the 4th of March I participated in the Wilmington litter pick up; during this I was surprised to discover the shocking amount of litter that was discovered in just a few hours. The event was put together to clean the area; the idea of this was to promote keeping the town clean and getting the community together to spread awareness of litter. With help from children and adult volunteers we were able to fill many bags in only a few hours. I was pleasantly surprised to find that many people were willing to turn up early on a Saturday for this and was even more surprised to find that people stopped to ask questions and shared their praise.
‘I think this is an amazing idea! You don’t see a lot of people now days helping each other out as a community without some hidden agenda; it’s nice to know that the next generation are willing do actually do something to make this a better place for their next generation. ‘– said by a woman who was passing.
The Government had to spend approximately £45.2 million in the year 2013/2014 according to ‘Keep Britain Tidy, Local Environment quality survey of England’. From the same report I discovered that 73% of the rubbish was smoking related, and this may be surprising to some people but from the Litter pickup I was not overly shocked about this statistic. It’s no lie that smoking products was a large amount of the litter.
With the large amount of litter that was found it made me wonder what other things Britain was doing to clean up its streets; the ‘Great Britain Beach Clean’ picked up an astounding 268,384 pieces of litter with a spectacular turnout of 6,000 volunteers. From this they revealed that there was indeed a decrease in amount of plastic bags they found compared to the year before, they believed that this was probably to do with the charge placed on plastic bags; however they also commented on an increase of ‘balloon related’ products found in 2016 based on the reports in 2015.
Furthermore the litter does not just make the streets of Britain look bad but it also has a major effect on the environment and animals. Fly-tipping is large percentage of the increase of pollution in today’s environment, however this is not the only problem with littering, people are constantly throwing litter out of their car and this can cause major problems. Not only is it illegal to litter (getting an average of an £80 fine) but this can cause accidents on the motor way and danger to animals as they can get trapped. The RSPCA are reported to be receiving over 5,000 calls a year regarding litter and animals.
To prevent this and to help keep Britain clean, there are many things you can do to get involved; it is extremely easy to find organisations who are looking for volunteers to help clean up Britain, so get involved, pick up a litter picker and help keep Britain clean!
Written By Alana Constant, Thamesview School
