Great British Spring Clean
This year York Cares is taking part in The Great British Spring Clean to help tidy up our city and give back to our Community. We are encouraging our members to get out in their free time between now and 31st of March and litter pick around their local area.
Now on its eighth year the Great British Spring Clean encourages people all over the UK to get involved and help tidy up the country getting rubbish off of the streets and into correct waste facilities such as recycling centres. Last year nearly half a million volunteers took part and a whopping 449,406 bags of litter were collected in the UK .
We are supporting the Great British Spring Clean this year as we want to do our bit to keep York clean. Our Environment & Sustainability programme focuses on large tasks in our green spaces in York but we would like to encourage ourselves and our members to remember all it takes is small acts, such as picking up rubbish, to give back in big ways.
Litter is a small but mighty problem to our environment, although it takes a second to drop it takes a lifetime to break down, litter can remain for decades or even longer with a plastic bottle taking 450 years to decompose. Our litter also has impacts on wildlife and natural habitats with the RSPCA reporting thousands of calls about trapped and injured animals. Not only does litter affect the environment physically but by replacing things such as bottles and wrappers and not recycling we are using up exponentially more energy- each day 20 million drinks containers are ‘lost from the loop’ meaning 20 million more are made. The creation of new plastics continues the cycle of damage to the environment. Although litter may seem like a part of our everyday life it has very damaging effects to our community, but luckily it has a very simple solution.
We are encouraging our members to get out and about and litter pick around their place of work between the now and the 31st of March. We will be hosting our very own litter pick at the University of York campus on the 19th of March between 12 and 2pm. We are asking our members to give some time and help by doing a small thing with big consequences. If you would like to get involved please contact info@yorkcares.co.uk we will be able to provide you with information on areas around your place of work that are in need of litter pickers as well as some City of York Council run events.
Make a difference this March and help clean up York!
