Litter pick no. 7 – 1.5 hours

August was bound to be a quiet month as people with children of school going age are likely to be either holidaying or having trips out at the weekend.  Added to that is the fact that here in the southern part of the UK, we are having a summer (!) so the weather has generally been hot and on occasion, very humid, and many people like to stay indoors and keep cool.  Because of this my husband and I had expected that we might be the only ones picking this month.  However, two of our most faithful friends and volunteers turned up to help despite the fact that they had to dash off somewhere and had to cut their time short with us.  Thank you – you know who you are!  In addition, we were delighted to be joined by a new volunteer who was enthusiastic and keen, so five volunteers in all.

Our friends who had to leave early we  left picking around the area near our house as they could start picking immediately and make the best use of their time.  The rest of us went picking by the railway bridge and the dual carriageway heading towards the city centre.  We do this area almost every month and I think we are only just keeping on top of it.

13 bags of rubbish in all – 9 general waste, 3 recycling and 1 bag absolutely full of glass bottles. There was also 4 metres of rather thin cable.

Another very satisfying pick, and I thought the five of us did amazingly well to get as much rubbish as we did.

We decided that we would pause the litter pick for the autumn/winter months just because the weather is likely to become even more unpredictable, so September will be our last pick until we start up again in March 2020.

I am always thinking of ways that I can get the message about the litter picking out to the people in our area, and I realise that the Facebook pages are very useful, but if lots of posts come on after mine, the litter pick gets pushed down and many people don’t see it in time.  I would have to post everyday the week before the pick – which I am reluctant to do as I know I get fed up of frequent posts about the same thing – in order to make sure it’s seen by enough people.  Many people are not on Facebook or don’t use it very much so I need to find an additional method of advertising.

I also have events registered with Litteraction and Keep Britain Tidy sites, but we have only had one volunteer through this.

Possible things that come to mind – I have found that our local baptist church actually do  their own litter picking event and have shown an interest in publicising ours, so I will try that.

The other thing we will try is putting an A3 poster outside our house the week before the litter pick and see what interest that generates from people just walking past the house.

Our friends in the other local group have posters printed which advertise the pick so I may see about printing some out and putting them on the community boards at local shops next year.

Here’s a question -how to people feel about leaflet drops? I am so loathe to do this as I just feel it is junk mail and I personally would just recycle it and it would not generate a positive response in me – am I alone in this?  If anyone reading this has any thoughts about this or any other suggestions, I should be pleased to have them.

John and I will pick litter once a month regardless, but I think more people would get involved if they only knew about it.