TK Maxx Bath

Keynsham Wombles work towards making our town and its environs as litter-free as possible, both as individuals and in groups. We are an active network of around 200 volunteer litter pickers, all individually looking after a small area of our town and surrounding countryside and collectively making a huge difference. We also organise ‘Big Wombles’ where we come together to tackle litter hotspots such as along the side of our river after flooding, or by industrial estates where litter builds up and few people live. In addition to litter-picking, we want to educate people about the effects of litter on wildlife and the environment. We do this by speaking to community groups, involving the whole community in litter picks and we are soon to install a Gumdrop bin. People will put used chewing gum in the bin and when full it will be sent away to be recycled into more bins, pens, cups and even wellington boots! We have found coming together to tackle litter as a community has multiple benefits, by bringing people of all ages and abilities together to tackle a common problem we have found that removing litter from our streets has the effect of reducing the speed at which new litter is created. As well as removing litter from our town we also work across our community to create change and reduce the sources of litter. Amongst other projects, this includes developing a primary school assembly and following this up with regular litter picks - we aim to work with every school in our town in the future so that every child has had experience of litter picking. We have also developed posters and Womble footprints for our street bins pointing out that they have ashtrays to try and reduce the amount of cigarette litter. We are also setting up a group called #noplaceforlitter. The aim of this group is to help new litter picking groups to set themselves up by being a resource for information on how to start up, getting equipment, helpful organisations and ways to get local councils and businesses on board. Our project costs in the region of £3,000 per annum to make sure our volunteers have the equipment they need, as well as additional costs such as insurance, posters and leaflets. Our litter prevention projects are in addition to this and vary depending on the project itself.