The weather contributed to one of our most successful Rescue events. We had more volunteers helping than in previous years. We were joined by a team of people from Barclays Bank in the Triangle and also we had a team of Guides helping on Saturday morning.
We were pleased to have new volunteers leaders for the Sunday sessions.
Session |
Number of adult
volunteers |
Number of
children volunteers |
Where cleared in 2009 |
Saturday am |
19(12)
|
7(3)
|
|
Saturday pm |
14(15)
|
7(14)
|
Blundells Copse |
Sunday am |
8(5)
|
2(3)
|
Bottom end of McIlroys, by the railway house, Bates Hill
down to |
Sunday pm |
12(10)
|
6(3)
|
|
Total volunteers for sessions |
57(42)
|
19(23)
|
|
Pam Webb and a team from Beechwood cleared an area by the Prince of Wales. Their detailed report is separate below – they had 6 adult and 6 children volunteers for the session,(included in totals above) We were also joined by volunteers from Armour Road Residents Association (separate report).
· We would have appreciated knowing upfront that the weekend collection service comprised two lorries – the one that collected electrical items, metal etc and the normal waste collection lorry. It would have helped the volunteers sort the rubbish accordingly. Nevertheless the dual collection service was much appreciated.
· We found the use of orange/clear bags a bit difficult to manage from time to time but provided people were working in pairs or in a group it was about manageable. It was good to see the amount of landfill saved.
· The summary sheet indicated that there green bags should be used for the separate collection of green waste but the people on the Rescue hotline did not seem to know about this service (see report below). The green bags were not collected immediately and were therefore vulnerable.
·
There was a real and serious problem with the
information we were given by the Rescue team about the skips. The pre Rescue
letter said that skips would be collected on Monday or Tuesday. In fact
Hadley’s were waiting for a telephone call to say when the skip was ready for
collection. We could easily have told Hadley’s at any time that the skips would
be ready by Monday morning. This mixup caused a great amount of added effort
for the organizers since they were on call for three days after the event
attempting to prevent fly-tipping in the vulnerable skips at the Coop car park,
· We were unhappy that several of the phoned in reports by volunteers asking for collections to be removed were overlooked (at Bramble Close and Aylsham Close for example) on the day and needed further prompting later in the week. This has the affect of degrading the success of the event – local people are worried by the piles of waste awaiting collection, particularly when they are not familiar with the event itself.
·
Land behind Himalayan Hotspot (corner of
· At this corner there is also a serious problem that there are gas canisters stored there without any sort of protection. The public is able to access the canisters which should be caged as a minimum, but should probably not be stored there at all. This needs serious and urgent investigation. The source is probably the Indian restaurant.
· We would like local businesses (eg Parkers) to take more responsibility for the litter on their premises
· KFC should take greater part in removing their litter
·
We could still do with really large capacity
bins throughout the main part of
·
There is still no news about what is going to
happen to the
·
We have been asked by the businesses on
·
There was some litter by Bran Close entrance but
less than last year but at the back of the houses in Ogmore Close and
· We would also urge that resident’s backing on to McIlroys on Thirlemere Avenue are sent letters by the council re dumping rubbish into the park over their back fences – some of the dumping is blatantly from these houses. We cleared a huge pile of rubbish from this area. Chris Cliburn, of Friends of McIlroys, should be contacted to help identify the culprits.
·
We cleared Bates Hill (the path that runs
between
·
Also the patch of waste land at the bottom of
Bates Hill on the
·
The bottle bank that has recently been installed
in the bus layby is attracting rubbish – mostly bottle tops. There is a bin,
but perhaps a large note to ask people to use the rubbish bins would not come
amiss. The fence by the bus layby is still broken. It should be fixed to help
prevent access into
· Can there be more publicity about what to do it you find the abandoned newpapers/magazines. Although the area had fewer piles of dumped newspapers than last year it is still a problem.
Report by Pam Webb who organized another very successful
session again.
We
finished with 6 adults and 6 children and cleared the brambles quite well. Litter wasn't too bad this year although the
usual cans, bottles and cigarette packets etc had been thrown in there by the
casual passer by.
We found a
dead mouse or baby rat that had crawled inside a bottle then couldn't get out.
There was
a heavy duty padlock - but no key, part of the fitting from a satellite dish,
something that looked like half of a litter picker and a wheel trim that we
left by the bags.
We filled 8 bags (2
orange, 2 clear and 6 green) but we used green wheelie bins for the bulk of the
brambles - I would estimate another 6 bags.
I also think some of the bottles were taken away for recycling by one of
the volunteers so we had spare bags which I returned.
The
collection was not as successful this year.
My first call was just before I brought everything back to you and I was
told that they weren't collecting green bags ! I said that I'd been given green bags so she
agreed to collect them but sounded very unsure about the location. I checked at about
The chaps from Reading Borough Council who work over the weekend providing the skimming service were brilliant again (not forgetting the chaps with the other collection lorry). Without them the weekend could not work so successfully. This year they did exactly what they said they would do – and came pretty much at the times that they said they would. Wonderful chaps!
Many thanks to all the people who turned out to help clear up the mess.
And
On a brighter note, a young chap – Cassius – who was out
for a walk – joined in and helped us clear the
considerable mounds of rubbish at the