Spring Clean Achievements 2016

The first weekend of March 2016 saw groups of enthusiastic volunteers all dressed in yellow high-viz jackets and armed with litter-pickers taking part in the 9th Annual OxClean Spring Clean, clearing litter from streets, banks, recreation areas and other public spaces across the city.

Over 1000 volunteers took part: each working for just 2 hours they collected a staggering 6.5 tonnes of rubbish, comprising 4.5 tonnes of landfill and 2 tonnes of recyclable materials.

The volunteers represented at least 80 organisations including the Brownies, The Women’s Institute, Faith Groups and Residents Associations plus a number of local companies.

The majority of the city’s primary and secondary schools took part by carrying out a Spring Clean of their grounds and the area around the schools, with one school sending 150 pupils to litter pick within the local community.

Students from both Oxford Brookes and Oxford University helped collect rubbish along the Botley Road and around the Cowley Road area where there is usually a prevalence of fast food cartons. A surprising find by the one of the teams working along the Botley Road was a complete bicycle. At the end of their shift this was placed with the other rubbish to be collected by the City Council Waste Team. A local resident seeing it realised it was his bicycle that had been stolen from outside his house 3 months previous, a happy reunion.

Nationally it is estimated 25,000,000 tonnes of litter is dropped each year with the majority of this being collected by the local authorities. Oxford is fortunate to have such committed volunteers to help keep litter off its streets although more are needed and welcomed. Litter picking can take place at any time of the year, details of how to set up a litter pick and borrow the equipment can be found elsewhere on this website.

The 2016 OxClean Spring Clean took place in conjunction with a national campaign ‘Clean for the Queen’ held to celebrate the 90th Birthday of Her Majesty the Queen. The success of this event has resulted in the launch of a new national annual litter pick to be called The Great British Spring Clean, the first of which will take place the same weekend as OxClean’s 10th Annual Spring Clean 2017.

It is hoped that in 2017 even more volunteers and organisations will sign up to litter pick and take part in 10th Spring Clean, 3rd- 5th March 2017. Please contact us to register or find out more about how to be involved.