Peterborough litter pickers band together to keep community clean

Litter has become a national problem during lockdown and Peterborough is no expection. With more people out walking and with more free time on their hands, local green spaces have been hit by a barrage of litter.

As recently as this week, Ferry Meadows announced that it would look into introducing on the spot fines for serious litter offences.

One group of residents are fighting back though.

For the past three months, Hampton Water residents have taken it upon themselves to assist local company O&H, who are responsible for the upkeep of the site.

Meetings take place at 6:30pm on Mondays and can last for up to two hours as litter pickers tour the residential area and nearby parklands.

Organiser Arun Baruah said: “Littering does appear to be a national problem and lockdown seems to have accelerated the need for this and increased the number of residents that have got involved. A lot of us were aware of the issue and decided that doing nothing wasn’t going to help.

“We have seen a lot of evidence of large gatherings around the lakes to swim and have a saying between us, you’re not a litter picker until you’ve found your first sock.”

“We work alongside O&H and they are excellent to work with. They have a strong environmental policy and are happy to allow us to leave our bags at the back of their premises for them to dispose of. We have an extra advantage though in that we can be flexible, we go out on Mondays but if we notice an area that is hit particularly badly, we can go out an take care of it.”

The weather very much influences the amount of litter found, recent hot temperatures have brought large numbers of people to green spaces and because of this, it has not been uncommon for the group to collect as many as 30 bags of litter in one night.

To help to support them in providing this community service the group, who have moer than 30 members on Facebook, have received help from both O&H and Peterborough City Council’s services company, Aragon, which has taken over city cleaning and maintenance.

Aragon and O&H been providing a supply of bags, litter grabbers and hoops to make bin bags easier to use while on the go.

Arun added: “It is a pleasure to work with them and I would also like to say that the support form the local community has been phenomenal.

“We frequnetly get lots of likes and comments when we post about our activities and even better, people who see us and come to thank us.

“Lots of people in the community really engage with us and we like to think we’re making people who might think about dropping litter stop and think. Hopefully, it can become quite a phenomenon.