The First Of Many Cleans 🌍

After recently announcing that we have joined forces with Surfers Against Sewage as part of their Million Mile Clean project, this month we partook in our first community clean. We decided to reach out to the Dartmoor community and outdoor lovers to clean up our home, Princetown.

The Million Mile Clean ♻️

Effectively, we and many other businesses & individuals all over the UK carry out litter picks, document our findings and report it back to SAS who directly call out those companies responsible, holding them accountable.

The Route📍

We kicked off the litter pick at 10:30am, with people arriving earlier for coffee and catchups, once all had arrived, we laid out our plan of action; clean up as much of Princetown as we could.

We decided to target areas within the village which we knew to be offenders, including the main street, the forest and playing field. Once we geared everyone up with their litter picks, gloves and documents, we set off! The route ended up being around a mile, that being said, you'll be amazed to see how much we gathered 👀

The Findings 🙌

Once we set off, people broke off into groups of 2/3 where one person could document whilst the other picked. On the day, we had around 5 groups all collectively doing our part, it was nice to see new and familiar faces and see everyone was just super keen to get stuck in! We found a whole range of litter in the few hours, from energy drinks galore, cigarette butts, vapes, wheels from a bike, signage from worksites...the list goes on. Luckily for us, we took the time to document our findings and break down in weight exactly what we discovered.

Cans & Plastic Bottles (5.8kg)

Whether it was buried in the shrubbery or thrown out a car on the street, there was a lot to be collected, with a grand total of 3kg, 1.8kg of cans and 1.2kg of bottles. The biggest offender here was Coca Cola, with the specific product being Monster Energy.

Hard Plastics (3kg)

Heading out to the forest path just past the Community Centre, we found various types of hard plastic, from cones to most notably, a bicycle wheel - I mean, where's the rest of the bike? 👀

We also found this action figure, safe to say I think the kids took him home - repurposing at it's finest!

Metal (24kg)

Admittedly this was mostly due to one metallic object, this discarded and heavily destroyed [inset here whatever you think this object used to be]. Sadly, we found this buried under the mud, which of course was massively rusting meaning there was lots of smaller bits of metal around the site we found it. This was a sad find, not only as it wasn't properly discarded but the object is super harmful to the local inhabitants, both people and wildlife.

General Rubbish (7.2kg)

Wrappers, dog waste, vapes - we had bags full of the stuff. I think it's safe to say that most of the finding here were from the street and carpark with some of the biggest offenders being vapes and cigarette packaging/butts. With ongoing work around the village, we came across lots of signs which had had been swallowed by the ground; for example we found this massive amount of general waste underneath this STOP sign.

A nest, seemingly filled with rubbish, pretty sad.

The Total Amount (40kg)

In total, we collected around 40kg of rubbish. And in the space of an hour and a half 😮

Broken down, this included:
• Cans & Plastic Bottles (5.8kg)

• Hard Plastics (3kg)

• Metal (24kg)

• General Rubbish (7.2kg)

Seemingly a lot for such a short amount of time! That being said, it was great to see people pull together and have fun whilst doing so, we had a great time running it and had some great conversations, we even got to play some football (he was a strong team of one, but he smashed it)

The Next Step 🚶‍♀️

We have now submitted the data from our haul as part of the Million Mile Clean. Surfers Against Sewage will then use all the data provided to call out the biggest plastic polluters and lobby the government for legislative change.

We had a blast hosting our first Community Litter Pick and will now be holding them monthly every first Saturday - hopefully next time we'll be heading out to the moors 🙌

In the meantime, carry out your own litter picks and protect the places you love, we certainly will be. And remember, if you're around Dartmoor, at our Princetown store, we offer free litter pickers - read more here.