This May, the BMC are teaming up with Surfers Against Sewage for the Million Mile Cleanup and we're inviting you to join in.
Over the past two years we have given out over 5,000 pickers and over 2000 bags and helped remove litter and plastic from our hills, mountains and crags to avoid it ending up in our oceans with our national Hills 2 Oceans campaign.Litter still remains a problem, costing £699 million per year to keep our streets clean.
This May, the environmental charity Surfers Against Sewage will be pushing their amazing Million Mile Clean 2022, with a focus on Mountain Clean Ups.
Surfers Against Sewage are calling for people across the UK to join the campaign and commit to cleaning up their local neighbourhood and hill or mountain walk.
The BMC is supporting this campaign and we would like as many people as possible during the week of Sat 15th May until Sat 23rd May
In 2021 Surfers Against Sewage Million Mile Clean found that the top 12 most polluting brands were responsible for 65% of the packaging pollution collected, with Coca Cola and Pepsi-Co taking the top two spots of ‘The Dirty Dozen’. Year-round data being captured by volunteers across the UK through the Million Clean will help Surfers Against Sewage better understand the scale of the issue and hold those responsible to account.
It is estimated there are now 5.25 trillion pieces of ocean plastic debris, and the quantity of plastic in the sea will treble by 2025. In a recent Government report, the most commonly found litter types include small plastic or polystyrene pieces and cigarette stubs. Did you know it takes six weeks for a tissue to breakdown, up to 10 years for a cigarette,10-20 years for a littered plastic bag to degrade, 80-100 years for an aluminium can, while plastic and glass bottles may never break down.
So, what can you do to help?
There are a number of other worthwhile clean up events already planned. To make it easier for you to find out about them, we brought all the details together in one place on our new Events Calendar .
Perhaps you’re already involved with a local walking group or know of a planned walk in your local area? We would encourage you, as part of this, to take a litter pick and remove as much rubbish as possible.
Organise your own H2O event
Alternatively, you may want to organise your own clean up event, particularly during the week of 15th May.
Details of how to arrange a successful event can be found in our resource pack and a template risk assessment.
Share your rubbish stories
Our H2O Facebook page is full of interesting stories and is a great record of the amount of waste we are removing from our mountains, crags and hills. From nappies, banana skins, bottles and wet wipes to pants, socks and a ghetto blaster – we’ve been removing all sorts. We would love to hear from anyone that is about to undertake a litter pick. In particular, where you go, how much rubbish you remove and if you find anything of interest. You can do this by sharing your stories with us on our dedicated Facebook Group.
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