Group picks up 120 bags of rubbish from river

A LITTER-PICKING group has cleared more than 120 bags of rubbish from a South Wales river in the space of three months, in addition to 100 bigger items such as beds, sofas and tyres.

Pride in Pill MBE, run by Paul Murphy, cleared up the stretch of the River Usk between Monkey Island and Lysaght Village between April and June.

Due to restrictions placed on the group by the pandemic, volunteers visited the site individually over the last few months, collecting several bag-loads at a time.

“You can see there’s been litter down for months and months,” said Mr Murphy.

“With the virus, everything has come to a stop... that’s why it’s got so bad.”

He now hopes that where the area has been tidied up, people will respect it and keep it clean in the future.

“What we’ll do is we’ll keep on top of it now, on a weekly basis, and try to keep it down. We’ve got it to look tidy now but we’ll keep our eye on it on a regular basis,” said Mr Murphy.

A message on Pride in Pill’s Facebook page reads: “With the kind help of the residents of Lysaght village and Newport City Council’s countryside team, the last of the bags have now been removed and the site should hopefully not need another big clean-up until at least next year.”

Clearing this site in particular was important to the group because litter dumped there can be seen by motorists on the busy SDR bridge.

This is in addition to the even greater impact of the rubbish on the health of the river.

Due to the amount of plastic bottles found among the waste, Pride in Pill has suggested a plastic bottle deposit scheme as a way to deal with the problem.

With Monkey Island cleaned up, the group is turning its attention to other areas along the river bank, including the area around the Transporter Bridge and near Liberty Steel, which they say will need a combined effort with other groups due to the scale of the problem.

The group’s Facebook post continued: “Together with the work we have done elsewhere along the river at Spytty Inlet, around Victoria Wharf and in Shaftesbury and St Julians, this year we’ll have removed more waste from the River Usk in the city than we have in the two previous years combined – a huge thanks to all the people who’ve helped us do this.”