Underground, Overground…
The Suckley Wombles are tackling the things that the everyday folk leave behind
After my husband and I moved to the village of Suckley four years ago, made new friends locally th hrough different activities and met m some really good people w who work hard for the benefit of o the village, for charities, g good neighbour schemes and s so on,” says Catherine A Armstrong of her W Worcestershire home.
“It was when I started jo ogging around the village to keep k fit that I became increasingly aware of litter around here. In the ditches there were bottles, beer cans and fast food packaging, even though we are twenty minutes away from the nearest fast food outlet. You don’t really expect it in the middle of the countryside – and this is in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty – so it was a shock.
“I approached the local council about setting up a ‘womble’ to collect the litter and that was the start of Suckley Wombles in 2017. ‘Womble’ just came to mind because I used to watch the Wombles on television when I was growing up – I was a big fan!
“I did a leaflet drop to around 150 houses in the village and advertised the group locally. We had about 30 volunteers for that first womble and, using equipment which I got from the council, we collected 48 sacks of rubbish. We started and ➙
finished at the local brewery, the idea being that we could socialise afterwards. I also brought along some home cooked food which I sold, raising money for St John’s Ambulance. On the second womble, six months later, we collected 24 sacks which was a good reduction although I still think that it’s appalling we are collecting that amount.
“We now do a womble twice a year and around 50 people are the group. It has become an occasion, a community gathering which we all enjoy and through which new friendships have been made. We’ve had more people contacting us to say that they would like their children to join in, and I have been in touch with the council about going out and doing talks to the local schoolchildren, too.”
“There is a sense of pride in looking after Suckley. We are a particularly vibrant parish when it comes to doing things anyway, I think. We are blessed by the people who live here, there is a band of real, ‘can do’ people.
“There seems to be so much more litter around now than when I was a child, and of course we are now so much more aware of the damage to the environment, of single use plastics and what it is doing to our wildlife and oceans. This isn’t somebody else’s problem to sort out, it is a problem for all of us. There is the financial aspect too – billions of pounds of taxpayers money are being spent every year on clearing up litter, which could be so much better spent elsewhere.
“I was really pleased to receive the Cleaner and
“It has become a real community gathering”
Greener Award at the Pride of Malvern Hills Community Awards in 2018 and then to be nominated for a Litter Hero award, at this year’s Keep Britain Tidy Awards in Birmingham. I attended the event last month and it was so inspiring to listen to the stories of other nominees. We all sang the Wombling Song at the end. It was so funny that a child on our table didn’t have a clue what we were talking about and a young woman looking strangely at me, but all of us of a certain age knew every word to that song!”