Picking up litter? It’s child’s play...

The day was clear and bright, the pupils forming the Woodside Community Champions were raring to go, and the pathways and bushes around the school were festooned with litter, just waiting to be collected.

The children were timetabled to work with an artist for the first part of the morning, but were split into two groups. As a result, we had two teams for litter picking: just right for a bit of friendly competition...the amount of litter collected, by mass, and the oldest piece of litter found...

A few days of windy weather ensured that paper, plastic bags, bottles and cans had been blown into every nook and cranny around the estate.

After a health and safety talk about potential hazards we all donned our PPE...hats, gloves, waterproofs and hi viz jackets...and, as honarary GoodGymers for the day, a red thunder t-shirt each...we then collected litter pickers and bags, and set off to clean up the neighbourhood.

Once the paths and pavements around the estate were cleared, we ventured into the nearby park. Here, the first team found a Space Invaders snack packet from 2013...a seven year old piece of litter...the same age as one of the children!

After an hour, each team weiged their bag of litter and the results were very pleasing...BOTH teams managed to collect an impressive 5kg of litter!

As a reward for working so hard, the pupils were allowed a little time to play at the park (think I've seen a few Liverpool GoodGymers doing the same thing recently). Afterwards, one pupil expressed an interest in joining GoodGym, and suggested that there should be one for children.

During lunch, I was invited to sit in on the Eco Warriors monthly meeting. Here, they shared their ideas for a more sustainable school, which tied in well with the Community Champions activities.

An Action Plan for improving the school grounds was being developed...with plenty of opportunities for some collaboration with GoodGym along the way.

A very worthwhile and rewarding task today.