LITTER LEGENDS
CW salutes the volunteers keeping green spaces tidy in the strangest of times…
WITH THE EASING of lockdown restrictions came a big influx of day-visitors to Britain’s national parks.
On the plus side, it seems that many people have discovered these precious areas for the first time, with most of them behaving responsibly. (A single-day survey in the Lake District found that 68% of those questioned had never visited before.)
On the downside, the parks have seen some hotspots becoming overwhelmed (for example, a solid line of parked cars up Pen-y-Pass, the most popular access point to Snowdon) and unprecedented levels of littering and illegal partying.
But CW isn’t here to whinge, and we know you’d never dream of leaving litter, dear reader (or heading to an illegal rave for that matter). Instead, we’d like to shout out to the scores of park staff and volunteers who’ve been out cleaning up after the insensitive ones. In the Peak District, volunteer rangers have been heading out to the wildest parts of the national park to collect litter from caves, tors and gorges. Ranger Anna Jenkins (below left) said the amount being brought back was “staggering” – including broken bottles, food packaging, bagged-up dog poo and disposable barbecues – but added that the volunteers, as well as walkers and locals, had mounted a “heroic” effort to keep on top of it.
In the Lakes, a single clean-up by rangers and National Trust wardens resulted in 130 bags of rubbish being collected. Meanwhile, pals Nicola Bolton and Josh Adams set up the Lakes Plastic Collective on Instagram, urging visitors to pop a pair of gloves and a bin liner in their rucksacks, and organising group clean-ups around the most popular lakes.
North of the border, Mountaineering Scotland has launched the appealingly named Tak It Hame campaign, encouraging people to post photos of litter they’ve collected with the hashtag TakItHame
So thank you all. We might be seeing the nation at its most selfish in our national parks at the moment. But we are definitely seeing it at its most caring too.
JOIN IN!
Follow the lakes plastic collective and takithame on Instagram; visit keepbritaintidy.org/litterheroes, or just search ‘litter’ on the website of your favourite national park.