Let’s keep our spirits high and our streets clean! Remember, every piece of litter we pick up is a step toward a greener, happier community. So, let’s March on together and make a difference! Feel free to share this with your fellow litter collectors, and may your March mission be as successful as your February efforts! 🌿🚮

Thank you, Linda for your email, please see below.

Great idea setting up a community mission for February to encourage litter picking! This is a passion of mine, especially right now because I'm conscious that, at this time of year, litter lurking on verges is still easy to spot and clear but will soon disappear under springtime plant growth then remain hidden, polluting the environment and harming wildlife for months ahead.

Just sending you a couple of pics from my efforts clearing rubbish from the banks of the River Ravensbourne in Ladywell Fields, Lewisham - now a daily activity for me as it makes my walks with my elderly, increasingly slow dog feel more satisfying.

When I decided to buy my own litter picker, I was chuffed to find one made by Waterhaul, a social enterprise collecting fishing nets washed up on beaches and recycling the plastic into useful products... kinda neat to be able to remove plastic waste from the environment without adding to the problem of plastic production, particularly as plastics are made from fossil fuels. I try to avoid using plastic bin bags too and instead collect the litter in a beach bag, then afterwards sort the items into either my recycling container or wheelie bin back at home.

Linda

thanks, also to Paul for writing in.

I did the litter pick in Catford's wonderful Mountsfield Park, combining it with the Course Check for parkrun. As is usually the case over the winter, the main debris collected were paper coffee cups, take away wrappers plus a few beer cans. Probably about a black sack's worth was collected, although I emptied it into bins that I past. The strangest thing found was a mug which I have seen and rescued before last year, probably lost again by a dog walker. Hope this is of use, let me know if there is anything else that you need.

Paul