Join The Local War On Litter

Seeing the amount of litter and fly-tipping around the village can be depressing and you can wonder how we will ever get on top of it.  We are fortunate to have a number of local residents who regularly collect rubbish. But what might change to make a real difference to this anti-social behaviour?  It’s not just applying the law, which is clear this is an offence. As we have seen recently, even with what we believe is fool-proof evidence, getting convictions is very hard.

Well, in May last year I was walking across Normandy Common and I saw two figures wandering around with a bag of rubbish. Intrigued I walked over and asked politely why they were collecting litter. Philippa, who lives in Walden Cottages said she was assisting her 9 year-old daughter’s litter survey around the play area and football field and promised to send me the results.  Well Leila’s year old survey, assisted by her younger brother Jamie, has been completed and gives a clear breakdown of what the rubbish is and the volume. You can see the results in her exceptional project here. Thanks so much to both of them for sharing this.  Leila’s Letter to NPC

This was an inspired project for a child to undertake and we can be hopeful that young champions like this can finally start to change the culture of people who don’t care about their environment.  Philippa has also recently started a project with a couple of women in Ash to look at how we can encourage people to reduce single use plastics in our area and how to reduce waste.  One action they are looking at is joining Keep Britain Tidy’s Great British Spring Clean.  https://www.keepbritaintidy.org/get-involved/support-our-campaigns/great-british-spring-clean.  Please also visit the Plastic Free project page https://www.facebook.com/groups/331592364098695/.

The Normandy Parish Council have been encouraged to add this subject onto their monthly meeting agenda to look at ways we can support Leila’s mission.  So please keep look out for more on how you can get involved in reducing this scourge on our community and more from the NPC in the future.