Tuesday 27th March saw our first community litter pick which we organised for Perranporth school. Inspired by an experiment performed by Clean Cornwall where they left rubbish by a bin and 99% of people just walked past we began the year determined to reverse that statistic. 
We wanted to do something that meant our children noticed the rubbish on their walk to school and started to not just walk past, inspiring us to set up the litter pick. And the response was amazing. The first street clean saw Perranporth school children collect 116 bags of rubbish on their journeys to school, filling an entire wheelie bin, kindly donated by Suez. 
It was wonderful to see a community come together and the children so proud of the rubbish they had collected. And so many were surprised at the quantity of rubbish, saying they'd thought they would struggle to find anything but couldn't believe how much there was once they started looking.
So a massive success. We're pretty sure that we have a new generation of litter pickers and that our community will find it harder to just walk past litter now, the streets were already noticeably cleaner on the walk to work after the litter pick. So well done Perranporth.
And now imagine, one full wheelie bin from Perranporth school on a Tuesday walk to school, multiplied by 271 primary schools in Cornwall, or by 24,372 primary schools in England, and then by schools across the world, secondary schools too, colleges and universities. Imagine what a difference that could make.
Here's what we did - so you can set your own up.
- Spoke to the school to get them on board.
- Spoke to the people who organise our school rubbish collection to see if they could help with the bins.
- Put a poster competition together for the school to get the children excited.
- We donated some prizes from our range.
- Delivered an assembly about rubbish on the streets.
- Posted lots of details to local community facebook groups to get more parents aware and the community involved, the school also promoted it via their newsletters and a noticeboard.
- Suez, our local waste company gave gloves for the children to use on the day, these are now available to loan for other schools doing the same thing.
- On the morning we manned the bin by the school entrance and children popped their rubbish in as they arrived, we counted by class to see which class collected the most, turning it into a bit of a competition
And that was it - A WHOLE WHEELIE BIN!!
So, we hope you'll feel inspired to set something up with your local school, do give us a shout if you have any questions. And here are some of our poster competition winners, well done girls!
Special thanks to Perranporth School, for being awesome! To the Ice Box for donating some prizes, to Suez for activities and so much support with equipment and prizes, and enthusiasm, and to Clean Cornwall for advice and guidance. And to Perranporth school children most of all, you should all be very proud of yourselves.
Check out 2minutestreet clean for more inspiration