The remarkable rise of Spelthorne Litter Pickers
“Listening to the comedian David Sedaris’s programmes on Radio 4 Extra I discovered he spends his spare time litter picking near his home”, Shirley Lunn, the co-founder of Spelthorne Litter Pickers, recalls. “I was inspired to start doing a few litter picks on my own.” Shirley assumed there was probably a local litter picking group and posted on Staines & Ashford Talk.
Co-founder Kelly Emma McKenna takes up the story: “I saw Shirley’s post and replied immediately. We swiftly created a Facebook group and within two hours had 20 likes and growing. That’s when we knew we might have started something local residents were enthused about.”
An early active member was Jem Jones: “For our first picks, we imagined a small number of pickers would pitch up but were astonished to find we had over 100 active volunteers within three weeks.”
This was in July this year and since then “membership” has grown to 455 with over half being regularly active on the picks. “It’s a real cross-section of the community across all areas of the borough,” says Shirley, “aged from pre-school children to retirement age. But everyone shares a passion for the environ-ment and wants to make a difference.”
Local pride
That pride in supporting the local community with what they are doing really comes across on their Face-book page, where members are encouraged to post pictures and tell stories of their picks. It is indeed up-lifting to see people from very diverse backgrounds finding a common community cause.
Shirley really does believe people care about the local environment and want to do their bit. “Litter pick-ing gets people out walking in the fresh air, which is good for their health and there’s definitely a feel good factor when you see the results of your work. It’s something you can do safely while maintaining social distancing and it’s a way of meeting new people. We believe our group is making a difference to the community by connecting people – the mental health benefits are endless especially if you feel a bit help-less about what is happening to the world. It takes you one step closer to making a difference.”
Children honoured as Litter Heroes
The Council has offer encouragement by officially honouring 32 children as ‘Spelthorne Litter Heroes’ for taking part in litter picks across the Borough. Kelly was delighted “We nominated the children and they have been sent a certificate signed by the Mayor of Spelthorne.”
Connecting with the community
Shirley again: “We record the locations of rubbish collected, so we can report to the local council on trouble spots, including places where we find large numbers of NOS [Nitrous Oxide] cylinders. We’ve recently arranged with the council that we can collect these cylinders and the council will sell them for scrap – the money raised will be used to raise awareness of the dangers of using NOS in this way.”
What next?
“We want to make Spelthorne the cleanest borough in the UK, somewhere our residents can be proud of and where commercial organisations are keen to invest because of the attractive environment” say Shirley, Kelly and Jem, the Group’s Trustees, “We would like more people to reduce, reuse and recycle to reduce waste. We hope to grow the group to around 1% of the population – about 990 people – so we have ‘eyes everywhere’. This would help to improve enforcement of anti-litter and fly-tipping laws.”
Want to be a part of this?
Pop along to the group’s Facebook Page (Spelthorne Litter Pickers) and sign up. That’s it.
A version of this article was originally published on the Spelthorne Liberal Democrats web site.