400,000!
Volunteers hit incredible total as thousands more pledge to pick up litter
AN ARMY of more than 400,000 public-spirited volunteers have pledged their precious time to help clear the litter blighting our neighbourhoods.
Over the weekend, another 10,000 people signed up to Keep Britain Tidy’s Great British Spring Clean, backed by the Daily Mail, from March 22 to April 23.
This takes the total number of volunteers to 400,208 – well above the 370,000 people who signed up for last year’s campaign. Encouragingly, this includes 144,711 children.
With just a few days until the clean-up begins, the half a million mark is now in sight. And last night, campaign organisers at Keep Britain Tidy asked for one final push to hit this target.
Richard McIlwain, the charity’s deputy chief executive, said: ‘With a week to go before the formal campaign launch, we are now asking everyone across the country for one last big push to get us over the line and hit our target of half a million volunteers cleaning up the country.’
A shocking 30million tons of litter is collected from our streets each year, costing councils an estimated £1billion annually. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers will head out from Friday to take part in the biggest clean-up Britain has ever seen, with events organised across the country.
Theresa May backed the campaign, with the Government recently announcing it would allocate £9.75million to allow every council to support local clean-ups.
This is part of their drive to make littering ‘culturally unacceptable within a generation’. It has also been backed by Prince William and TV cookery stars Mary Berry and Prue Leith. Conservationists including Sir David Attenborough, Chris Packham and Bear Grylls have also approved.
Last week, United Nations Environment Assembly president Siim Kiisler praised the campaign for sending out a ‘strong message’ that littering is unacceptable. After hearing about the mass litter pick in Britain, he told an international environmental gathering in Kenya that cleaning up towns, cities, beaches and the countryside was vital way in raising awareness of waste disposal.
Mr Kiisler said: ‘They see that their friend, neighbour or colleague from work or member of their family went out and, with their own bare hands, picked up some trash – because there is no other way to collect it. If they see their friends doing it, they will probably think twice before dropping litter again.’
Some high street giants have also lent their support, including Asda, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Marks & Spencer, Greggs, McDonald’s, Costa Coffee and John Lewis.
The Daily Mail has long campaigned against the scourge of plastic in the environment, putting pressure on politicians and businesses which led to the tax on single-use plastic bags and the ban on microbeads in cosmetics.