Greening Chinnor – Spring Clean litter pick

On Sunday 1^st April a team of 16 volunteers from Chinnor and Kingston Blount carried out a community litter pick on some of our most popular footpaths and bridleways. These included parts of the Ridgeway and Driftway. We were extremely fortunate in enjoying one of the last fine days of the recent warm spell.  You now know what those people in the brightly coloured jackets and carrying huge bin bags were doing on a Sunday morning.

The group split up into 5 separate teams in order to maximise the amount of rubbish collected. The results exceeded even our optimistic estimates with about 25 bin bags full of recyclable and non-recyclable rubbish. Rubbish collected ranged from the usual plastic drinks bottles to the more unusual oil cans and parts of cars!  However, we were extremely disappointed with the sheer volume of dog mess which was left in a range of plastic bags either on the ground, thrown into ditches or hung from hedges and trees. We are baffled as to why anybody would want to do this! Some of the offerings were in brightly coloured freezer bags – is this to make it more attractive to children?  It cannot be due to the strain of carrying the bag to one of the dog bins as we found examples within 30 paces of the bins.

Anyway enough about some of our less responsible fellow citizens and a huge thank you to everybody who turned out – young and old – you know who you are. Thanks also to Jo and Liz from the Chinnor Parish Office who did all of the chasing up for resources and also ensured prompt collection of our waste. Our thanks to Biffa who supplied all of the kit.

Finally please watch this space as we intend to organise a follow up community litter pick in the early Autumn and will again ask for volunteers via the “Pump”