As you bask in the sunshine this Easter weekend, look around you. Are the streets, parks and beaches strewn with litter? Or are they as pristine as nature intended? If so, you’ve undoubtedly got a diligent local litter-picking community to thank.
When the Mail announced its partnership with Keep Britain Tidy in this year’s Great British Spring Clean, the task — galvanising half-a-million litter-picking volunteers — seemed frankly impossible.
But what a difference one month — and an incredibly successful national campaign — can make.
Successes from the Great British Spring Clean include 911,698 bags of rubbish being collected and two golf buggies being removed from the Grand Union Canal during the campaign
A band of more than 30 litter pickers from the Mail’s offices in Kensington, west London, went to the Ham Lands nature reserve in Richmond, south-west London, to help pick up litter in playing fields
As the Great British Spring Clean 2019 draws to a close, it appears to have far exceeded all its objectives. It will go into the record books as the single biggest mass-participation environmental campaign ever.
So far 554,729 volunteers have signed up for a whopping 17,097 litter picks. Viewing these astonishing figures, Keep Britain Tidy’s chief executive, Allison Ogden-Newton, says: ‘It really is incredible.
'We’ve been amazed by how many litter-picking events have been organised and how many people have turned out — no matter where you live in the UK, the Great British Spring Clean will have touched you.
'The response is astonishing and humbling.’
Not only has this fantastic initiative given more than half-a-million people the opportunity to do something to reduce the burden of waste plastic on the world, it also appears to have significantly shifted public consciousness.
The campaign has transformed the concept of clearing litter from a slightly embarrassing pastime, or even a punishment, to an empowering activity.
Stories have emerged of friendships forged as communities gathered to do their bit. Schoolchildren were joined by youth groups, families and colleagues gathered, and neighbours met neighbours for the first time.
People of all ages and backgrounds have been brought together to clear public spaces of litter and stop toxic plastic waste finding its way into our oceans.
Schools gave the campaign a flying start on March 22 with the official Great Big School Clean, which has seen more than 175,000 youngsters nationwide running around in search of litter — up from 126,651 in 2018.
As many as 554,729 volunteers have selflessly pledged more than one million hours of their time to make Britain a cleaner place. Volunteers are pictured above in Richmond
Volunteers collected cigarette butts, crisp packets, polystyrene boxes and beer cans over the course of two hours in Richmond yesterday. Across the UK, the volunteers have made a huge impact
‘There’s been such a palpable buzz of excitement this year,’ says Lee Wray-Davis, the Eco-Schools manager at Keep Britain Tidy. ‘We’ve recruited more than 4,000 new schools since the last Spring Clean, and a growing number are becoming actively involved.’
The response of young people to the plastic blight has been wise beyond their years.
One is Elizabeth Gadson, eight, who has inspired more than 3,000 people by charting her litter- picking exploits on social media. Known as The Litter Collector, Wirral, she has 932 Twitter followers, and 3,397 likes on
