‘Love it, don’t trash it’

A COUNCIL officer in charge of keeping streets clean in Porthcawl is asking people to become more reactive when it comes to picking up litter rather than just posting pictures of it on social media.

John Rees, an operations manager at Bridgend County Borough Council, wants the town to come together and run a litter campaign with schools, volunteers and businesses all taking part.

Presenting the project – which has a provisional name of “Love it, don’t trash it” – at a Porthcawl Town Council meeting he said that due to increasing cuts on services he was having to look at different ways to keep streets clean.

He said: “The idea is for people to become more involved in the town they live in.

“Schools are the building blocks to this and we would like to see them become involved through various projects based on the environment which can then feedback to parents.

“There’s a tremendous amount of work already happening in the voluntary sector and we’d like to see individuals becoming litter champions for the streets.

“We also want businesses to become more environmentally friendly with a reduction of plastics and cardboard used in fish and chip shops.”

Mr Rees said the plan was for the project to be rolled out to Bridgend, Pencoed and Maesteg.

He added: “Bridgend council and my team get criticised an awful lot, we often have photos presented to us of bins spilling over but people never take a photo 10 minutes later when they’ve been emptied or when there’s a bin just up the road which is empty but people choose to chuck all their bags in one spot.

“Let’s use social media posts to reflect a positive image of the town.”

Councillors at the meeting on Thursday, June 14 supported the scheme and now plan to meet with traders in the town to gain further support.