This week is Keep Britain Tidy’s #LoveParks Week and we’re asking you to #LoveNotLitter the city’s green spaces over the busy summer months.
We’re committed to making the parks we manage safe and welcoming spaces for everyone, and that includes keeping them clean and tidy. To help us do this we need everyone to make sure they put their rubbish in one of the bins located in our parks, or take it home with them to dispose of safely.
Unfortunately, like in many public areas, people often don’t get rid of their rubbish properly, which means that litter is a big problem in the parks. We’ve rounded up some facts and figures that show just how much time and money goes into managing waste and litter.
How much does litter cost us?
Dealing with litter costs our charity between £120-130k each year, that’s roughly 10% of our overall budget!
While this figure includes the normal costs for maintaining our bins and carrying out regular collections, it also includes roughly £10k spent on skips to dispose of the litter that wasn’t properly disposed of and had to be picked by our rangers and volunteers.
We also regularly schedule additional bin collections for peak times in our parks, like school holidays. To do this in all 33 of the parks we manage costs us over £1,000 per collection.
How much time do we spend on litter?
Not only is managing litter expensive, it also requires a significant amount of time and energy from our hardworking ranger team. Our eight rangers spend an average of 1.5 hours every day collecting and disposing of rubbish in our parks, which means litter takes up…
60 hours per week
which is
3,120 hours per year
That’s almost 2 full ranger posts of capacity being dedicated just to litter!
How can you help?
The easiest way to help prevent litter in Newcastle’s green spaces is to tidy up after yourselves and your friends and family when visiting the parks. However, if you want to do more to help keep the city’s green spaces clean and tidy you can sign up to Urban Green Clean.
Our independent litter picking volunteers are sponsored by the LGA Foundation and are needed in all parks across the city. When you sign up we’ll provide you with litter pickers, gloves, bin bags and hi-visibility vests, as well as instructions to keep you safe. There are no set times or guidelines about how often volunteers should take part, just whenever they can help.
Find out more and sign up today here.