Every Litter Butt Hurts

10 Goodgymers helped their local community in Slough
John Hayes
Jenni H
Manjit Birk
Kam Atwal
Meera Patel
Jean Watts
Naomi Mallett
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Slough

Monday 13th January 2020

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Manjit Birk
Manjit Birk

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REPORT WRITER

Slough runner

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Report written by Manjit Birk

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Week 2 of 2020 and we are going strong. Two more Community Missions behind us from last week, we are clocking up those Good Deeds. Thank you to everyone who helped with our environmental clean up on Friday and with junior parkrun takeover on Sunday.

This week we have a starter session on Saturday. This is an opportunity for anyone who can’t make the Monday Group Runs to have an opportunity to see what we do. So please do spread the word and get friends and family involved. The meet up point is at Upton Court Park for Saturday’s session.

https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/school-tidy-up

No pain no rain

With true British weather, it was as rain as day that a few runners might not make it tonight…the rain was relentless …it drizzled it down on our run out…definitely no running in the fast rain tonight…but it was torrential on the way back with a nice breeze for extra resistance training! Serious kudos to all our runners tonight…it really wasn’t a pleasant session but you did it! And an extra special welcome to John from Birmingham who was doing a bit of tourism! Hope you liked Slough?

Be Clean; Be Green; Be like our Roisin machine

So today we were headed back to one of our favourite task owners…Our local NHS hospital. The run route is slightly on the longer side but that makes litter difference to the team now. With this task we have no time pressure as such to get there as we have access to office to collect the kit we need…

Our task was to litter pick any rubbish, cigarette butts and any other items we could find in the Hospital grounds. And with our grit and determination, no area is left unturned…we all want to be like our machine…Roisin! (Roisin earnt this nick name from our task last week – never seen anyone work a mop like Roisin did!). Though Meera did more posing than picking...and Ihfaz took the longest time ever to tie up one black bin bag... speed work makes dream work..

Tired of picking your butt?

As all NHS premises are smoke free zones now…there are no receptacles to dispose of the butts…so you’ve guessed it…the floor is where they end up.

We did our utter best to pick up as many as could, butt it’s always a litter bit tricky to get into some areas….and actually the hospital grounds were looking a lot better this time..

Did you know?

  • Cigarette butts can take 12 years to degrade
  • In the UK, 120 tonnes of cigarette related litter are discarded on our streets
  • This accounts to over 40% of our street litter
  • Cigarette butts leak toxins that contaminate water and harm marine life and the environment

With the weather starting to get worse, we decided to end the task after around 20 minutes…but even in that time we managed to fill 8 bags full..

We took an easy jog back to base and ended the session with a good old stretch.

With our extra runs and community missions in January, please do check out our future events and join in when you can…hopefully something in there that you can help us with?

Next week’s task has just been cancelled so I will find us something else to do – keep an eye on the event listing. https://www.goodgym.org/areas/slough/happenings


This task supported
Wexham Park Hospital
Committed to Excellence, Working Together and Facing the Future

Part of the Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust

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Discuss this report
John Hayes

Mon 13th Jan 2020 at 11:57pm

Thank you so much for the warm welcome and excellent task, and the long run was just perfect for me tonight.

Manjit Birk

Tue 14th Jan 2020 at 6:46am

Great to meet you John.. hope you had a safe journey home

Join us on our next session

Slough

parkrun volunteer… New Year New You
🗓Sunday 5th January 2025 8:30am

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