September litter picking – a little extra care goes a long way

September saw several of us out litter picking in our own neighbourhoods, showing how even a short session can make a noticeable difference.

Paul B returned to his regular route along the River Quaggy in Kidbrooke. Heavy rain had brought a lot of rubbish downstream and he collected around half a dozen bags for life full of muddy litter, with plans to return and finish the job.

Jacqui and Sally managed to combine a night out with a good deed, litter picking on their way back from the Chaka Khan musical in Wembley. Their haul was mainly discarded coffee cups and sandwich wrappers. Cecilia also spent 40 minutes around Herbert Road, collecting a full bag of mixed rubbish and giving the local streets some much-needed TLC.

I did my usual September litter pick, walking from home to a local park via the church. The area around the bus stop and churchyard was particularly bad. While picking in the graveyard, a lady walking through with some schoolchildren stopped to give me a very warm thank you. At the other end of the spectrum, someone rather unusually suggested I should simply “phone the council”!

Thankfully that reaction is rare. Most people are incredibly appreciative. I’ve even had council workers offer me bags and thank me for helping them out when they’re already stretched.

And perhaps that’s the wider value of doing this. It isn’t only about removing litter. It gets us outside, improves the place where we live and quietly shows other people that we care about our community. Adding that little bit of extra care will nearly always be noticed and valued.

Summer holiday over, the doors of the babybank had reopened and donations received. So it was time to pop round and do our bit in the process - the initial sorting through the donations by sizes, filtering out the dirty & unusable ones.

After a minor mixup, finding another group in our usual area, we got stuck into digging through several crates while in the mean time catching up about holidays and theatre visits and such things.

Blink and it was approaching 8PM just as we finished the last few bits. Packing up and putting the bags of sorted items away didn't take too long, so after a final sit down we went our own ways.

With more crates already waiting, it might not be the usual 6 weeks before we come back!