Sophie Lack

It was great to be back on a community mission at the Terracycle hub at Pinewood today, helping prepare for reopening to the public tomorrow. The recycling hub has relocated within the nursery so we were preparing the new area for opening.

Jen donned her waterproofs and armed with soapy water and a mop cleaned down the last couple of green bins ready for public donations of recycling.

Pam sorted through the crisp packets to box up the ones going to Terracycle and to separate those prepped for the crisp packet project which turns them into sleeping bags for the homeless. In the meantime, we sent Sophie crackers sorting and boxing up the sweet and savoury biscuit packets.

Rekha collected a mountain of boxes from Clean Conscience in Holyport, a charity supporting the Sierra Leone women’s development project. They needed help decanting hundreds of mini tubes of hand and body wash into 2 20 litre containers.

Rekha managed a third of a container at home before dropping them to the rest of the group (Sophie, Elliott, Jess, Ruth and Hannah) who came equipped with lots of layers and an electric outdoor heater.

This was also Hannah’s first GoodGym good deed- whooop! Go Hannah!

We prayed for dry weather and set to work. Wine, Prosecco, beer, music, nibbles and pizza kept us going for the 3 hours it took to fill both the bottles.

Thankfully we only had one light rain shower which was surprising after a crazy day of downpours followed by sunshine!

Everyone’s thumbs were aching by the end with lots of slippery moments where the tubes would spring out our hands or fall into the funnels when we tried to squeeze out every last drop!

It was a super fun task with lots of great chat, and a beautiful fruity aroma all the way through! The containers will be dropped back to the charity tomorrow ready for them to be shipped to Sierra Leone on Thursday.

5 runners met at St Luke's School for an evening of weeding around the car park.

The intrepid team of 5 got stuck straight in with the task of weeding the shingle beds around the car park. The Sycamore trees from neighbouring gardens had deposited their seeds in the area and a carpet of mini trees had sprung up amongst the shingle. They were easy to remove and the area was quickly cleared. Juli, Sophie and Jess cleared the corner area, and Nicola took on the new hedge area. Meanwhile Matt armed himself with a broom and swept all the leaves off the shingle to smarten the the whole area up.

Once all the leaves, sycamore trees and all other pesky weeds were cleared the team were treated to some home made (and home grown) kale cupcakes which Juli had baked! Yum yum!!

Cake consumed the team left for a run together to Boyn Grove Park resulting in discussions about hotels, restaurants and the fun to come when Lockdown is finally lifted.