Another litter pick as part of the Surfers Against Sewage ‘Million Mile Clean’ and to collect more materials for the Green Man ‘Rubbish Sculpture, to be created on 29th and 30th April.

This litter pick was part of the ‘Great British Spring Clean’ run by Keep Britain Tidy and also was part of the Surfers Against Sewage ‘Million Mile Clean’.

Much of the litter collected was saved for the making of the Green Man ‘Rubbish Sculpture on 29th and 30th April.

New equipment was provided: gloves, hand sanitiser, first aid kit and re-usable and recyclable bags, shown here.

Join us any time between 11.00 – 3.00pm, meeting at the Community Garden. This litter pick has been timed to make it easier for families to take part, during the summer holiday.

Bags and pickers will be provided – please bring your own gloves.

Two members of Plastic Free Cotgrave are involved in an international litter survey supported by National Geographic, to find out what our litter is made up from. Once a month for 6 months, they carefully log (and pick up) every scrap of litter on a 200m x 1m stretch of pavement on Candleby Lane. This is logged on an app so that findings can be analysed worldwide by the University of Georgia.

What are we finding in Cotgrave? Not PPE (As we had expected). The main culprit is cigarette ends – which do not degrade. In the July survey, there were 124 of them on that one stretch alone! This photo shows some of the items picked up that day, including sticking plaster (ugh), gum (ugh, ugh) and sweets and food wrappers – all plastic.

This litter pick was timed to make it easier for families to take part, during the half term holiday.

We were delighted to support our Community Allies at the Cotgrave Community Garden by holding our first community litter pick there, to remove rubbish from in and around their boundary hedges.

Between 11.30 and 1.00pm, 18 volunteers filled 12 bin liners with rubbish from the footpaths and hedges around the village centre. One volunteer commented that she … actually enjoyed it.

"People were saying thank-you to us as we were going around. I was really touched by that!"

Much of the litter we removed was or included plastic: hundreds of cigarette butts, sweet wrappers, bottles, food packaging, masks and even some tinsel – probably from at least Christmas 2019!

If left in the bottoms of hedges, the plastic items here would disintegrate into micro-plastics in the environment – and be there for generations.

In addition there were glass bottles and metal drinks cans, which would last even longer in the environment.

It was gratifying to have members of the public stop and thank the volunteers for what they were doing. There were many positive responses on social media afterwards with comments such as ‘Brilliant’, ‘Well done’ and ‘Great job’.

We will be holding more litter picks over the summer – watch this space!

We are grateful to Streetwise, who provided all the pickers and bags.