Barbe-queue

On a hot Saturday morning, the GoodGym crew met with Friends of Grove Farm and LAGER Can to bring order to the parts of Sudbury Hill plagued by litter. The team was big enough to split it into smaller squads.

Sevan paired with a volunteer from Ukraine, Olena, and went for a litter pick in the park area where the GoodGym team had been clearing vegetation two weeks ago. The most interesting things they found were a woolly scarf and a cardigan, not the most useful on a hot summer day.

Steph, Madhan and Kash revisited the alleyway behind the David Lloyd land, notorious for being a fly-tipping site for household waste and rubble. Just a month after removing tons of bulky rubbish from there, we found out there must have been a constant supply of waste. The path was now blocked with garden furniture, discarded fences and plant pots. Cathy from LAGER Can queried the residents about whether they intend to keep the stuff in the alleyway for later use. The answer was inconclusive at that time, so we went back to the meadows to fill our blue bags with classic finds like bottles, cans and plastic bags.

A few minutes later we've been called back. The verdict: the cluster of bulky items was a waste and we were going to deal with it. A barbecue set, along with a stone cat, a door, clothes dryers and a bunch of other random objects were slowly moved to the far end of the alleyway and dropped in a spot where the council would collect them. The path was quite narrow, so we had to queue at times to let the lifters of the bulky stuff pass.

It was a good muscle workout after our runs to Sudbury Hill and we were glad the task was in the morning and in the shade. As the day was turning into a real scorcher, after 90 minutes of work, we tied our blue waste bags, drank plenty of water and decided to walk - rather than run - either back home or onto the next mission.