On a balmy June Monday evening, 5 GoodGymers collected 10ish bags of discarded litter and waste.

Stefanie, Sam, Pavel, and Ben strolled from St Peter's Square via the Bridgewater Hall canal path to Hulme Park, collecting all sorts on the way:

• bottles, cans, drinks cartons 🥫
• vapes, air pods 📢
• cardboard packaging 📦
• takeaway waste 🗑

With 4 full sacks collected, and some litter hotspots identified, we met Gaynor in Hulme park, sporting her GoodGym t-shirt for the 1st time 😀

We made a loop around Hulme park, having a go on the swing and impressed with the relative lack of litter given the warm picnic-friendly weather. We did find a suitcase, some more clothing and empty money bags in the park, plus other litter, while keeping to the shade given the heat 🥵.

Litter bags were collated, location saved, and will be reported (some again) to Keep MCR Tidy for collection.

Good stroll and litter pick in the sun 🌞

Welcome to Gaynor for their first ever GoodGym Manchester Task! Great to meet you briefly and hope to see you at another session in the future!

This evening, we collected any tins, cans, jars, and other non-perishables from the cupboards or the shop, to drop off at the big ASDA in Hulme as a donation point for Manchester South Central food bank. We had lots of peanut butter, jam, tinned meat & veg, rice pudding, UHT milk, pasta sauce, and added the carrier bags in for good measure.

With a 2.3 km distance from the meeting point to the drop-off point, Pavel and Ben did their own version of the Farmer's carry with bags in each hand and a hefty backpack each to take the load past Parakeet Parkway. Excellent Monday evening workout to get a bit of a sweat in the May sunshine.

Lots of chit chat about a possible GoodGym app, marketing GoodGym, camping, plus much more. Much lighter walk on the way home too!

As a warm up for the Great British Spring Clean coming up, Pavel and Ben made the brisk stroll from St Peter's Square to Sackville Street and a green space often littered with rubbish from passers by and passing cars.

In all, we collected 7 full refuse sacks plus a stack of large pieces of cardboard from an area known as Greek Street as one of the sites for Ardwick Climate Action. Included in the haul was a range of:

• cans and drink bottles
• unused tampons
• fast food packing (McDonald's and Archies prime culprits)
• packaging and wrapping
• laughing gas canisters
• cutlery (some of it looked like Uri Geller had been using it...)

After an hour or so, we cleared the area and piled the bags in a reasonable spot to be collected by Keep MCR Tidy and the council to collect this week. Hopefully, removing litter will encourage others to look after the area and not drop their discarded waste for others to deal with.

Keep an eye on upcoming GoodGym MCR tasks with an array of litter picking sites on offer