St. Albert’s Primary Eco Committee decided when we wrote our Eco Action plan that we would adopt the two streets on either side of our school, Maxwell Drive and St. Andrew’s Drive, for regular litter picking. This was because school grounds litter surveys have shown that some of the litter in our grounds is not the type to be dropped by our pupils, but rather has been thrown or blown in from outside. They had also noticed graffiti in the local area (which is another form of litter) and were keen to report this to the council so that it can be removed.

As we were not allowed to borrow extra litter picking kits from the council, due to current Covid restrictions, we decided to use some of the money in our school Eco fund to buy some extra kits that we could use instead. Our Eco fund is money that we raise ourselves through recycling textiles with the Rag Bag company.

Primary 6 walked up St. Andrew’s Drive collecting litter along the way and continued litter picking in Maxwell Park, before heading back to clean up Maxwell Drive. Not surprisingly, at this time of year,  used fireworks showed up in the litter survey results, but discarded face masks were also regularly seen on the ground. The litter collected filled 6 bin bags and these weighed a total of  6.4 Kg. They photographed examples of graffiti in our local area and recorded the locations and type of graffiti they found and these have been reported to the council so they can be removed. Here are some pictures of Primary 6 on their litter pick and graffiti hunt.