Cromwell Polythene, and its manufacturing and recycling division CPR Manufacturing, have undertaken a voluntary litter pick for Keep Britain Tidy’s Great British September Clean, which took place 11-27 September.
Cromwell’s clean-up of its local area in Sherburn in Elmet, near Leeds, resulted in 185 items of litter, including miscellaneous pieces of all types of material, being collected by two teams. The CPR team, based in Alfretron, Derbyshire, found 60 items, plus hundreds of cigarette butts and several pieces of paper, tyre, bolts, and screws in their nearby vicinity. In total, eight bags of litter were collected, weighing 15kg.
As well as being an eyesore on our environment, litter discarded on our streets, or that enters our rivers and seas, can harm wildlife. In addition, items can contain toxic materials that are hazardous to our health. If illegally dumped, these can leach into water sources, contaminate the soil, and pollute the air.
Keep Britain Tidy’s litter survey 2019, commissioned by Defra, found that cigarette stubs are the most commonly littered item, accounting for 66% of all litter itemsdropped. Other items found by Cromwell included wet wipes, a toy car, a discarded football, food wrappers, wood panelling, a money bag, clothing, a vehicle rubber mud-flap, electrical wires, foil, pottery, disposable coffee cups, and plastic bottles.
James Lee, Managing Director of Cromwell Polythene, said: “Protecting the environment is extremely important, and in the public’s efforts to do so, plastic has become the focus of attention. Our litter pick shows, and we continue to reiterate, that plastic itself is not the problem, but waste – of all types of material – is.
“We know that we all need to do more to act sustainably, but litter pollution is not just about plastics or inadequate infrastructure for recovery and recycling, moreover it’s about behaviour. People create litter and our sample survey shows that there is still room for improvement across local communities to show that we love where we live.”
