Original Buff® Sponsored Cleanup - UK - 15 Dec 2009
On Sunday was the 2nd leg of the ORIGINAL BUFF® sponsored environmental cleanup projects this time with THE WANDLE TRUST in Merton on the outskirts of London (UK).
The Wandle Trust is a UK Environmental Charity that was founded in 2001, dedicated to restoring and maintaining the health of South London’s River Wandle and its catchment. Their primary work is holding community river cleanups on the second Sunday of every month, up and down this unique urban chalkstream – pulling out everything from shopping trolleys to shotguns, and improving the environment for birds, fish, insects and local people. They also help to re-engage children with their home environment through their annual Trout in the Classroom Project, which has featured for several years in succession on the BBC’s London Newsround. Additionally, they engage, involve and communicate with local people, to generate empowerment, ownership and sustainable community stewardship for the River Wandle as well as, build partnerships and work on facilitation to form strong, sustainable partnerships with other strategic organisations concerned with the health of the River Wandle, and facilitate the achievement of common goals.
The cleanup took place between 11 am and 3 pm on Sunday 13th December 2009 and saw 44 volunteers pulling rubbish from a section of the River Wandle in Merton. After a comprehensive health and safety briefing everyone got stuck straight in. They hadn’t run a cleanup at this location before, so there was plenty of rubbish including three motorbikes, the remnants of several bicycles still padlocked together and a car seat! There was also so much carpet that you would have thought the river bed was underlain by it rather than gravels and they tried to reserve judgement on where it might have come from – despite the large carpet store nearby!
In total they pulled around 15m3 of rubbish, weighing approximately 3 tonnes, from a 50 m stretch of the river, check out their blog for more details > Merton Cleanup.
The Wandle Trust is exceedingly grateful to ORIGINAL BUFF and LANEO for sponsoring this event. It means that they can fund further cleanups along the River Wandle and get more local volunteers involved, making the river and its surrounding environment an even more pleasant place to enjoy in the heart of London.
For more information on the Original Buff® Environmental Stewardship program, please go here > Buff/Environment
Next stop on the Original Buff® European Cleanup Tour will be near Barcelona (Spain) in a few weeks, check back here to our Blog and on Facebook and Twitter for more news !
