Northants Litter Wombles - May/June 2023 Edition

 Article by Sally Romain, Chair of the Northants Litter Wombles

The Northants Litter Wombles (NLW’s) was formed in January 2021 following the lockdown period during the Covid 19 pandemic.  People went walking for their daily exercise and began to notice how littered Northamptonshire had become.  Nicola Elliott our founder, started a Facebook group which has rapidly grown to some 3,400 members.  To date (April 2023) we have collected over a staggering 59,000 bags of litter, improving the environment both for people and wildlife alike and saving the taxpayer some £3 million.

We strongly believe that everyone deserves to live, work, study and play in a place free of litter.  It improves the well-being of all and helps to engender pride in local communities and improves the local economy as companies want to invest in the county and tourism blossoms.  Unfortunately, our litter problem is caused by people who think it is acceptable to throw their litter out of car windows, drop their drink can or crisp packet or fly tip their rubbish in the hedgerows for someone else to clear up, including numerous bottles of urine discarded by lorry drivers onto the verges of our main roads.

Our group, named after the famous TV programme, is a group of ordinary people doing the extraordinary every day who say, “enough is enough” and take positive action to clean up our towns and countryside for the benefit of all.  We pride ourselves on a ‘can do’ attitude.

We work through our 40 or so affiliated subgroups throughout Northamptonshire whether it be in the major towns, villages, or hamlets.  We not only take direct action by litter picking, but most importantly we educate children and young adults through our school’s programme ‘Creating Litter Education and Awareness in Northamptonshire’ (CLEAN).  We raise awareness by promoting our work to encourage others to help out.  We hold free 30-minute assemblies in schools and for Scouts, Brownies, Beavers etc.  Our presentation is informative, engaging, interactive and challenging.  By involving children in caring about the problem that litter causes, we aim to encourage and empower them to change their habits and those of the people around them.  So far, we have reached around 10,000 children across Northamptonshire and have more assemblies booked in.  We also follow up with litter picking sessions to support and encourage the children.  We use funds to buy little purple Wombles jackets and pickers which the children love to use!

We link with other voluntary, statutory, and commercial organisations to promote our aim of having a litter free county, thus improving the environment for people and for the wildlife.  The latter suffers hugely from the endless plastic both in their habitat and in the waterways, of which there are many throughout the county.

NLW’s is an organisation run entirely by volunteers and is reliant on donations and grants to continue its work.  We are an unincorporated association, with a bank account, constitution, policies, and an elected committee.  It costs around £40 to kit out a volunteer Womble with picker, hoop, high vis vest etc.  We also run a website and have a webmaster to keep it relevant and current.  Many large companies want to work with us such as Panther, Wickes, Barclaycard, and Nationwide, to address some of their environmental policies and areas of corporate social responsibility.

We are also involved in other initiatives such as lobbying our Members of Parliament to bring about change not only locally but at a national level too.  We realise that littering is a huge problem along the motorway system and A-roads which we are unable to access for safety reasons.  At some stage, we hope to host a ‘litter conference’ and bring all the interested parties together for the benefit of the environment.

Are you ready to play your part?  Could you help us with any expertise such as marketing, grant funding, conference hosting, social media, liaison with change makers, influencers or simply joining us on one of our group litter picks?  If so, we would love to hear from you.  Please contact Sally Romain, Chair of the Northants Litter Wombles at sally.romain@northantslitterwombles.co.uk or have a look at our website at www.northantslitterwombles.co.uk.