Lets celebrate the high school pupils community clean ups efforts with a write up from the litter impact educational day at Archbishop iisley RC high school.
On Tuesday 15th November the school engaged in a 'save the planet' day learning what the impact of waste and litter is having on our environment. The weather as you experienced was against us very wet, so we adapted around the forecast and managed to complete all four litter workshops. The morning started with the whole of year 7 attending ‘Our Planet’ assembly about 200 pupils, The first litter workshop was taken around their church car park where litter dating back 13 years was found. This area has also experience fly-tipping with pupils expressing their shock at such a sight. The second and third workshops seen the pupils clear up their school grounds finding an old pull ring tab drinks can that went out of production in 1989. The fourth litter workshop went out into the community of Acocks Green with three police constables from Sheldon WMP attending. The constables explained to the pupils that littering is an offence and children from the age of 10 years can receive a fix penalty fine of £100. The community litter pick shocked them the most due to the amount of litter available to clear up but the pupils would need more than an hour to clean up all the litter witnessed. In one day the school pupils filled 38 bags of litter learning that the community waste is mostly food on the go purchases where using a bin would have prevented such an expensive clean up task.
Karen Blanchfield Keep Britain Tidy Litter heroes ambassador who created the little litter warriors educational program said, “It was great to see how engaged the high school pupils were and their determination to pick up as much litter as possible was inspirational, Acocks Green village is badly litter and there is evidence of fly-tipping on many private business car parks being added to everyday by local businesses. This was a shame for the children to see this adult behaviour but an important message for them to witness in our future generation of adults. The pupils and teachers were expressing how they need to do more after seeing what we as litter picker witness daily. I can actually say the need for change in human behaviours was taught with teachers expressing how they would like to do more about looking after their community within their enrichment program.
The teachers asked the pupils if they started a litter picking club would they join up and help to introduce a litter management routine in their school with 90% of them throwing up their arms to join in. The day seen over 110 pupils join in the litter pick workshop with pupils finding litter dating back to 1985, 1989, 2006, 2012 and many items dating 2 years.
Pictures are of the pupils after the fourth litter workshop and the fly-tipped area just outside their school ground in the off Shirley road car park area, showing how the local businesses here use this fly-tipped area as means of disposing of their trade waste.
Birmingham city council supported the program providing bin bags from ‘love my street’ initiative and providing the waste disposal collection of the litter filled bags. Without the council support we could not have disposed of such a large amount of community waste.
Thank you to Amazon Droitwich Depot for funding the litter picking equipment for this eduactional work.