Wemyss Bay Spring Clean 2001

Saturday, April 28th, 2001.

For the fourth year running the Community Association organised a local volunteers spring clean under the auspices of Keep Scotland Beautiful and the National Spring Clean. For one day per year under this initiative local authorities provide free skips, gloves, bags, litter pickers etc., to enable communities to have a go at getting rid of their local litter problems.

Report

The cleanup took place on the usual date, last Saturday in April (the 28th). There was an excellent turnout, with the Guides to the fore as in past years. In total, thirty five people were logged as participating, and there were a few more on the fringes.

The work was organised partly on an "own back yard" basis, so the more people there were from a particular road, the more cleaning was done in that area. Accordingly people from Cliff Terrace cleaned up the fly tipping beside the woodland track, a hardworking couple from Castle Wemyss Drive attacked the paths up the hill, with some help from their Leapmoor neighbours ( who also cleaned around the flats development at the entrance to Leapmoor ) and another couple from Mountstuart tackled builders rubbish dumped behind their house on the forest edge. A family from Wemyss Bay Road had a go at bottles, glass and cans on the main beach, and the Shore Road people did the small beach.

We also had the help of three people from Skelmorlie and one from Inverkip.

As always the Guides were everywhere, around the Centre, Spar and the hill past the woods.

Particular thanks to Alistair Montgomery who helped me collect all the sacks from the various locations and get them to the skips after everyone had finished litter picking.

In the end four skips were filled, firstly and mostly by the cleanup and thereafter by locals dumping their own stuff, which is fine as long as there is no overload. ( The centre skip was piled high, but we were lucky there was no wind and no overspill )

The cleanup seems to expand each year, which is very encouraging. However, things will be pristine only for a few hours on the last Saturday in April, unless we can effectively discourage casual littering by kids, uncaring and cynical building waste disposal by developers, and vehicle based fly tipping presumably both by locals and non-residents alike.

A few ideas:

1. Further restrict vehicle access to likely fly tipping spots. This has already been done with the woodland end of Cliff Terrace.
2. Work with the school to engage primary school attitudes to casual littering which hopefully might remain with some/most kids in their secondary school years.
3. Lobby the Planning Service to make proper waste control an explicit planning condition of future developments in Wemyss Bay

We are making some progress, serious littering is being kept at bay and should decrease if building development ever tails off. An environmental group is being formed within the Community Association, whose first priority will be to save the woods by twisting the Council's arm to look after them properly.

Thanks again to everyone who took part.
Finlay McFee (Cleanup Organiser)