Great success as children across southern Oxfordshire become Litter Bug Detectives
South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse district councils’ waste team successfully worked with 20 local parish and town councils to run children’s activity trails in the school summer holiday.
Participants in the Litter Bug Detectives Trail could choose to be entered into a draw for their school to win litter picking equipment for a class, including litter pickers, hi-vis jackets and bag hoops.
The winning schools are Ladygrove Park School in Didcot and to St Nicolas CE Primary School in Abingdon. The councils will be presenting the litter picking equipment to them later this term.
The trails were created by the councils’ waste team for use by town and village councils and were available in August. They followed on from a successful pilot of the scheme run by the councils in four parks at May half term.
The activities were aimed at primary school children and were produced to promote recycling and reuse messages and explaining the damage litter does to our environment.
Each child who took part was able to get a free notebook and pencil. If they got all the answers correct, they could request for a personalised Litter Bug Detectives certificate.
Just under 70 certificates were requested in total and 35 schools submitted to the draw for litter picking equipment.
Councillor Catherine Webber, Vale of White Horse District Council cabinet member for Climate Emergency and the environment said: “The feedback we’ve had from parents, children and grandparents has been incredibly positive. We are pleased that so many were able to take part. These trails offer the chance for whole families to test their knowledge on waste in a fun way.”
Cllr David Rouane South Oxfordshire District Council cabinet member for housing and environment said: “These trails were a success from the start in the pilot project in the May half term, so it seemed obvious to expand it. I am delighted that from this we were able to offer litter picking equipment to schools to help improve their environments.”
Examples of comments
“… we really enjoyed doing over the summer holidays. Thank you for arranging the trail!”
“It was fun doing this and I liked the notebook and the pencil, thank you for sending them.”
“Many thanks – we had lots of fun doing the trail!”
“Many thanks for putting the trail together, it was great fun!”
“Many thanks for the fun, informative trail.”
Notes to editors
The trails were available at the following sites
Goring, Chalgrove, Warborough, Wallingford, Chinnor, Woodcote, Berinsfield and Thame and at Cholsey village fete.
Abingdon, Kennington, St Helen Without, Kingston Bagpuize, Stanford-in-the-Vale, Faringdon, Great Coxwell, Watchfield, Uffington, Drayton and Harwell.
