With Stratford Original BID (business improvement district), the guarding company STM Group (UK) Ltd was joined by Newham Council and local businesses, in litter picking around that east London area, cleaning the streets of rubbish and participating in the #BigBagChallenge.
Lasting from March 25 to April 10, the Great British Spring Clean (hosted by the charity Keep Britain Tidy) is a national movement, challenging people to help keeping Great Britain clean. Across the borough, some 600 volunteers and 29 events contributed to the council’s pledge to pick 530 bags, to go towards the national tally of 449,406 bags.
Beginning in 1950, when The National Federation of Women’s Institutes passed a resolution to “Keep Britain Tidy”, the organisation has been pushing for a cleaner Britain ever since. This has included the Environmental Protection Act in 1990, and encouraging councils to introduce fixed penalty notices, for littering, in 2005. Back for its seventh year, the theme of the Great British Spring Clean: join the #BigBagChallenge and pledge to pick up as much litter as possible.
Keep Britain Tidy offers these stats about the extent of Britain’s litter problem:
– More than 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are discarded globally each year.
– Cleaning up litter from the streets of Britain costs the taxpayer around £500 million – excluding the amount it costs to clean up parks and other public spaces.
– The rat population has increased to 60 million due to the increasing amounts of litter.
– Almost half, 48pc of people admit to dropping litter.
STM Group, a member of the ACS Pacesetters group of guarding contractors, says that it’s honoured to have participated in such a powerful movement. Working with organisations from across Stratford, STM staff (pictured outside the Theatre Royal Stratford in E15) set out on a morning of litter picking and filling a total of 15 big bags! Local residents and passers-by expressed their appreciation.
