Volunteers get to grips with litter in Victoria Park after All Points East festival
Keep fit enthusiasts take time off from their weekly gym session in Bethnal Green to help Tower Hamlets Council's litter campaign at Victoria Park. Picture: Mike Brooke - Credit: Mike Brooke
Volunteers have joined Tower Hamlets contractors to clean up the East End’s parks as well as streets and housing estates all this week.
Volunteers carefully using long-handle grips to tackle litter at Victoria Park. Picture: Mike Brooke - Credit: Mike Brooke
The council’s latest borough-wide ‘Love Your Neighbourhood’ campaign kicked off yesterday with “litter pickets” turning up at the gates of Victoria Park.
They arrived to tidy up after the weekend’s All Points East music festival, though found most of the rubbish had already been cleared up during the night.
A team leader from Veolia cleansing depot in Blackwall briefed them on how to tackle dangerous objects like needles and glass shards, carefully using gloves and long-handle picks to grip the litter.
Most of the stuff they found, however, were cigarette butts and chocolate wraps in the hour-long purge.
A job well done... members of Bethnal Green's GoodGym helping spruce up Victoria Park after their evening work-out at the gym. Picture: Mike Brooke - Credit: Mike Brooke
War was also being declared on flytipping in the streets as well as litter, with up to 5,000 smelly old mattresses having been dumped last year, for example, on council housing estates.
Volunteers collected 7,000 tonnes of litter and debris in 2016, council figures show. They’re hoping to do even better this week.
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The clean-up is running all week and even the mayor is joining in when he rolls up his sleeve for Thursday’s litter pick at St Leonard’s Priory in Bromley-by-Bow.
Other events if anyone wants to join continue today along the Regent’s Canal from Mile End Lock to Limehouse from 10am, then Clare Street in Bethnal Green at 2pm and Swedenborg Gardens off The Highway, Shadwell, at 6.15pm.
Tomorrow’s one event starts in streets around Bethnal Green Gardens at 2.30pm. Thursday’s events start in Westferry Road outside the Docklands Sailing Centre in Millwall at 10am, and at St Leonard’s Priory in Bromley-by-Bow at 2pm.
Friday’s events are at Copperfield Road by Mile End Park at 10.30am and the Hollybush Estate in Bethnal Green at 2.30pm.
