Let’s clean up after corona!

Today we’re relaunching the Mail’s great litter pick... find out how to join us – Britain has never needed you more

A MASSIVE nationwide campaign to clean up Britain backed by the Daily Mail is finally relaunched today after being postponed by the coronavirus crisis.

Shocking pictures have shown the lockdown litter blighting the nation’s beauty spots in recent weeks.

From the countryside to the coast, thoughtless people have left piles of waste and plastic while meeting up with friends and family as restrictions have been eased.

The Great British Spring Clean, run by Keep Britain Tidy and supported by the Mail, had to be postponed due to the crisis. But it will still go ahead in the autumn, the charity announces today.

Renamed the Great British September Clean, the campaign will once again encourage people of all ages and occupations to hit the UK’s streets, parks and beaches in the fight against litter.

In recent months some of Scotland’s bestknown beauty spots have been blighted by rubbish and waste being left behind, including on the UK’s highest peak – Ben Nevis.

Barry Fisher, CEO of Keep Scotland Beautiful, last night said: ‘Litter is not a new problem but the easing out of lockdown has brought with it a new litter emergency. Keep Scotland Beautiful fully backs the Scottish Daily Mail campaign to encourage those across Scotland who have some spare time to help clean up Scotland through socially distant litter-picks.

‘We have produced guidance to support those who want to get involved safely, and are building up to a community-led week of action in September as part of the Great British Clean Up.’

Richard McIlwain, deputy chief executive of Keep Britain Tidy, said he had been ‘horrified’ by the images of rubbish strewn over parks and beaches in the past few weeks.

He added: ‘I have yet to meet anyone who doesn’t hate litter and wants something done about it. Now is your chance to do something about it.

‘The beauty of the Great British September Clean [is that it’s] a chance to make a real and practical difference, to get outdoors and to get active in fighting back against the sea of plastic and rubbish.’

Last year, more than 500,000 people helped clean up Britain as part of the Mail’s campaign.

The original campaign, which was set to run throughout March and April, attracted hundreds of thousands of pledges to get involved from individuals, litter picking groups and large organisations.

It received the backing of the Church of Scotland, the Cairngorms National Park and prominent political and celebrity figures. The Wombles even came out of hibernation to encourage the nation to get involved.

The annual event had to be postponed as it became clear the Covid-19 crisis was escalating. But now, with Britain gradually easing out of lockdown, it can go ahead as planned. It will now run from September 11 to 27 and we hope all our readers will get involved in the fight against waste.

Earlier this year, the campaign hit half a million volunteers just six weeks after its launch, eclipsing last year’s total volunteer tally of 563,163.

The incredible number of people signing up was thanks to the likes of Lloyds, HSBC, Jaguar Land Rover and McDonald’s, who all pledged thousands of their staff would take part.

More than 100,000 schoolchildren, from nursery pupils up to sixth year, signed up, many of whom came from the 20,000 ecoschools now registered in the UK.

National Rail also pledged 41,000 employees and £2million for clean-ups and prevention. The 2019 clean-up effort was the biggest ever mass-participation environmental campaign. Volunteers cleared parks, beaches, streets and common land of the equivalent of 239,344 wheelie bins full of rubbish, nearly 20 per cent of which was plastic bottles.

At 17,097 events across Scotland, England and Wales, our readers collected almost a million bags of rubbish – more than 4,000 tons of litter that would have ruined our open spaces, potentially harming wildlife.

Now, the challenge is to still do our bit while also sticking to Government guidelines on preventing the spread of coronavirus. Everyone involved will still be encouraged to separate plastics to be recycled, and to wear gardening-style gloves when they go out picking.

For more information, and to sign up to get involved in the campaign, please visit: keepbritaintidy.org.

‘Chance to do something about it’

SOMETIMES it’s right to wonder whether our leaders understand the gravity of the situation facing us. Coronavirus is primarily a disease of the respiratory system but its secondary damage is done to our economic system. Lockdown, while necessary to save lives, placed the economy in a coma. With every day that passes, it becomes more vital to bring the patient back round.

The Prime Minister seems to be making an effort by encouraging us to shop and travel within the UK, but also by seeking to lure foreign visitors back to our shores.

His proposals for ‘air bridges’ may not have been rolled out in the smoothest fashion imaginable but the intent behind them is sound. Tourists represent economic lifeblood and Britain is in dire need right now.

The same sense of urgency cannot be seen from the Scottish Government. Nicola Sturgeon has spent the past few days indulging in snark and petty point-scoring.

So far this week, she has called the UK Government ‘shambolic’ and accused various figures within it of ‘misrepresentation’, ‘absurd and ridiculous political comments’, behaving in a ‘shameful and unacceptable’ manner and ‘trying to turn a public health battle against a deadly and dangerous virus into a political/constitutional argument’.

Miss Sturgeon asks us to accept that in this crisis she is not motivated by politics, yet she speaks in the bellicose rhetoric of ideological warfare.

It would be more beneficial if she were to focus her energies on getting Scotland’s economy back to rude health. Her refusal to rule out quarantining English visitors to Scotland was a mistake and will remain one until she is forced to u-turn. That she cannot clearly reject such a damaging and divisive policy says nothing good about her judgment or her willingness to listen. Boris Johnson has been no paragon either. His claim there is no border between Scotland and England was risible and only provided grist for the SNP’s resentment mill.

The Nationalist administration’s handling of ‘air bridges’ has been similarly wanting. Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf says his ‘blood boiled’ at being given mere hours to review a list of countries with which travel arrangements had been struck. Downing Street continues to be deficient in its communications with the Scottish Government. This is simply not good enough and these discourtesies must end.

Yet Mr Yousaf ought to understand that government is not a nine-to-five job. UK ministers and officials had to negotiate separately with more than 50 countries in volatile circumstances.

of course there wasn’t a long consultation period, of course details changed as events did. It is his and the First Minister’s responsibility to respond to fast-altering situations with flexibility and good faith.

It is often asked why the general public doesn’t take more of an interest in politics. Weeks like this one are why. The people must live with the consequences of bad politics and this week has been nothing but bad, rotten, cynical politics.

Those who will pay the price are not the politicians in their bubbles at Westminster and Holyrood but the hoteliers and bedand-breakfast owners, the tour guide firms and the souvenir shops. Their livelihoods are on the line and if they go down, no one will take their place any time soon.

Scotland’s economy is on the brink and the tourism sector clinging on by its fingers. This, not bickering within the bubble, should be the priority.