We meet at the Baptist Church Hall in Lombard Street where we keep a storage trunk in the Church Yard which contains our equipment for litter picking.
If there is no event taking place in the Church Hall we are able to use the Hall for preparing ourselves with grabbers, hoops, black binliners, tabards etc. before we go out, generally in pairs, to selected areas of the village. We return to the Hall 1.5 to 2 hours later and after packing the equipment back into the storage trunk those that wish can stay for tea, biscuits and a chat in the Hall.
It's a very satisfying service to the community and helps to keep our village as tidy as possible.
One of the Litter Pickers says...
We go around the village on the last Sunday of the month (except December) and fill bags with stuff that has been discarded. Initially I was so surprised. People sometimes bag up their rubbish and then throw it out of their car/van window! Why can't they just take it home? The ring road and the road to the toll bridge are particularly bad. The bulk of the 'rubbish' comes from the fast food industry. There are also lots of plastic and glass bottles - sometimes containing fluids which make the collecting bag pretty heavy.
When looking ahead in the long grass for things that shouldn't be there I normally look for something bright which doesn't look natural (ie: not brown or green) and I'm sometimes surprised by the beauty of nature. I may spot something bright red which I assume is rubbish and it's a leaf!
I initially volunteered because I am part of a community and want it to look its best. However, God does expect us to be good stewards of this amazing planet and if more of us appreciated our surroundings then, yes, the whole world could be a better place.