All Saints Parish Council Environmental Working Group
Litter Picking Event – 8th March 2025
Ten Parishioners and two Parish Councillors met after the Village Breakfast Fare on Saturday 4th March 2025, for the Environmental Working Group’s first litter pick.
Kathy Adams had previously contacted ‘Plastic Free Axminster’ who had very generously loaned the group gloves, high-viz tabards, pouches, buckets and grabbers. They have subsequently donated 6 grabbers which is very kind of them.
The pick was organised into 4 areas using the main access roads. There were pick up points in each sector if the buckets got too heavy and needed to be collected later.
The areas covered were
- Goldsmiths Lane (3 people)
- School Lane (3 people)
- South Common Lane to Alston Lodge (2 people)
- Churchill Lane from Catmoor Cross to Socks Hill “T” junction (4 people)
- Smallridge Lane had been cleared a week earlier by Ron Lancashire as the lane had been shut to traffic for road works. Thank you, Ron.
After a safety briefing, the groups set off on their routes. Contact was kept via mobile phones to update each other or highlight any potential problems.
The litter found included bottles (glass and plastic), cans, crisp and sweet wrappers, coffee cups, bits of cars and mirrors, wheel trims, pieces of hard plastic and a lot of black industrial plastic embedded in hedgerows and banks.
Every collector filled a large bucket but there was no necessity to leave any at collection points and collect later. 12 buckets were collected in total.
The different routes took different times to complete and therefore finish times were different. This meant that some litter was segregated into metal, glass, plastic and land-fill by individuals before others had finished.
On future picks we will segregate everything at the end to get a better idea of what is collected overall and to note any differences between the different routes.
Goldsmiths Lane had the most bottles and cans whereas it appeared that Churchill Lane / Socks Hill had a lot more pieces of black industrial plastic. No surprise, but the Village Hall car park had a fair bit of rubbish tucked away!
After a couple of hours picking, a welcome cup of tea was enjoyed with a discussion about future picks.
Comments from the pickers included:
- “I think we could have advertised it on the board with the seed swap as clearly a lot of people don’t read any of our Comms”!
- “I think we should have advertised it at the breakfast as there was surprise from quite a few that we were there doing things… Some people don’t read the Comms. At least they would then know we were doing it”.
- “It took too long to get going. I also think the beginning could have been a bit more organised, but that will be better next time :-)”
- “It wasn’t clear what was to be done with our haul at the end. We chose to segregate metal, glass, plastic and rubbish and find suitable homes for each (some in the school recycling boxes)”.
- “It would have been good to take photos of everyone’s segregated haul (we didn’t – which was an oversight), so we could work out a top ten”.
- “Pictures at the start of everyone would have been good”.
- “I think the idea of ending somewhere for a cuppa is nice, happy to offer ours next time”
- “I thought it was really well organised. Happy with the route that I did. Some of the bottles in South Common Lane had been there a long time as they were encased in mud”.
