Keep Scotland Beautiful helps out with litter picking kit

A team at the Western General Hospital has been the first to receive litter picking kits to help in cleaning up their local area.

There will be 20 new litter picking hubs in Scotland and the charity Keep Scotland Beautiful is providing them all with the necessary free equipment. All groups, including the eleven hubs created last month, will follow strict social distancing and safety guidance.

Keep Scotland Beautiful is trying to empower communities to deal with their own litter problems, some of which became worse during lockdown and over the summer. A third of people responded to Keep Scotland Beautiful’s survey saying that they thought the problem was now worse in their areas.

Barry Fisher, Chief Executive at Keep Scotland Beautiful commented:  “During lockdown, many of us spent time enjoying our local parks and green spaces. Lockdown showed us how important these areas are to our health and well-being. Unfortunately, a minority of people have behaved in an irresponsible and selfish manner, dropping their rubbish, leaving it for others to clean up and spoiling our beautiful country.

By using the litter picking hubs, people will be able to tackle litter in the areas they care about and help Clean Up Scotland.”

The funding for these Helping Hands litter kits has been provided by Zero Waste Scotland, and will see kits containing ten litter pickers, gloves, bag hoops and hi vis vests to allow people to take part in either individual or two household litter picks. The community groups will also be able to access posters and social media content to help encourage people to look after their local places and keep Scotland beautiful. 

Iain Gulland, Chief Executive of Zero Waste Scotland, said: “Litter has no place in a circular economy. Discarding resources like plastic, metal and glass not only blights our communities, it also wastes valuable materials that should be being kept in use for as long as possible.

“Whether it has been our local streets, parks, woodland, countryside or coastline, recent months have highlighted how valuable our environment is to so many of us and why it needs to be kept that way.

“It is a shame these are needed, but the litter picking hubs will give communities the opportunity to tackle the nuisance of litter and ensure the areas they love can continue to look their best.”

Further detail of these hubs can be found on the Clean Up Scotland website