3rd July 2012
Keep Scotland Beautiful mobilised 3,378 volunteers to clean up Highland as part of Scotland's National Spring Clean.
2,612 children and 766 adults from Highland were amongst 117,734 volunteers from across Scotland who gave their time between 1 April and 31 May to support National Spring Clean, run by Scotland's leading charity for the environment, Keep Scotland Beautiful.
In Highland, groups from community councils, schools, student volunteer groups, youth groups, businesses, guides and scouts, environmental trusts, council staff, and churches all pulled on their yellow Keep Scotland Tidy tabards and spent time cleaning up different locations. The result of all the hard work is that 65 public gardens, school grounds, woodlands, nature reserves, rivers/canals/loch-sides, beaches, country parks, road verges, villages and town centres in Highland will be litter free for summer.
Picking up thousands of discarded juice and alcohol bottles, cans, crisp bags, cigarette ends, filled dog poo bags and fast food wrappers, volunteers in Highland also uncovered some more unusual items - these included a windscreen wiper, a pair of glasses, TVs, tyres, a harbour fender, a rusted spring mattress, and rope.
Across the nation, using litter pickers and gloved hands each person collected on average one and a half black bags of waste - this means that 120 bags of litter were collected during every hour of every day of National Spring Clean.
Many groups also recycled the litter they collected this year, helping reduce the amount going to landfill and supporting Scotland's zero waste targets. Zero Waste Scotland provided funding to support the campaign.
Helen Darvill, Environmental Quality Coordinator at Keep Scotland Beautiful, said: "I am astounded by the number of people who have given up their time this year to keep their own parts of Scotland beautiful. It is a real achievement that 3,378 people from Highland came out in force to take part in National Spring Clean 2012, and I am sincerely grateful to everyone who has been involved - from the local authorites, businesses, schools and nurseries, community councils, and enthusiastic individuals - you all deserve a massive pat on the back. Keep Scotland Beautiful shares the government's vision for Scotland to be cleaner, greener, safer and more sustainable, and everyone involved in National Spring Clean is helping Scotland achieve this."
National Spring Clean 2012 may be over but people can still organise and take part in clean up events throughout the rest of the year. Clean Up Kits can be ordered online at www.keepscotlandbeautiful.org/cleanupkit. In addition, Zero Waste Scotland has also today launched a new £250,000 fund to give community groups, as well as local authorities, businesses and landowners an opportunity to trial innovative projects to prevent littering in the first place. For more information about the fund, visit www.zerowastescotland.org.uk/litterfund