On Tuesday evening, Mark and Hannah went to the Keep Manchester Tidy GB Spring Clean Celebration at The People’s History Museum in Manchester. The event was to celebrate the efforts of community groups in and around Manchester who have organised a stunning 200 litter picking events so far in 2019 with 7000 volunteers taking part.
Keep Britain Tidy has joined forces with Manchester City Council to implement new techniques and ideas to promote better attitudes towards waste. The partnership aims to make Manchester the first ‘Tidy City’ by 2020 with campaigns to make fly tipping socially unacceptable and tackle litter in all its forms through an independent task force made up of local people and businesses.
“Our shared vision is for a cleaner city, with better parks, green spaces and waterways, which recycles more and plays its part in limiting the impacts of climate change. And everyone is getting involved – from the public sector and businesses to the city’s schools and residents’ groups.”
The event was organised by Emma Krijnen-Kemp and attended by various groups and organisers from around Greater Manchester as well as Councillor Rabnawaz Akbar, Executive Member for Neighbourhoods. It was great to see some familiar faces as well as meet lots of new people.
As part of our corporate responsibility pledge, WasteSURE has donated skips through our Community Cleanup Pack to various groups this year in order to collect and dispose of larger wastes in a safe and compliant manner. We are really proud to have been able to help these groups with their events and pleased that we could step in where councils could not collect the waste.
Mark Dunne, Co-founder of WasteSURE, Bury, said, “It’s so uplifting to go to an event where everyone is determined to make a difference and it is a real pleasure to be able to help them through our Corporate Responsibility Pledge by giving skips and equipment where we can. Having spent the evening chatting, we have come away with all sorts of ideas to help manage events and incentivise others to join in. We would like to thank all the wonderful volunteers for their incredible efforts and we hope to work with them again soon.”
In fact, the WasteSURE team are already working on a new idea to encourage more people to get involved and boost local communities too. Keeping a neighbourhood clean and tidy should be communal responsibility and as well as proper planning to make waste disposal easier, local communities must pull together.
However, we have also come to realise that many people need a more tangible incentive to give up their time and get involved. This is why we are now working on the new WasteSURE Weigh-In Scheme which will incentivise people to join litter picking events by gamifying the experience and presenting prizes to those who manage to collect the most. We’ll be sure to keep you posted as we develop our idea!
