An autumn clean-up of the Loop has taken place over the past weekend (20th and 21st October), almost exactly six months after a similar event in the spring. Fortunately the weather was warm and dry on both days which made for pleasant conditions! As previously, volunteers started from The Quadrants, Levenshulme on both days and headed east on the Saturday and west on the Sunday. The task was over by 1 p.m. on each day which was partly due to the fact that the Whalley Range Scouts took responsibility for some of the Loop at the St Werburgh’s Road end and The Abbey Hey Neighbourhood Forum did the same for the Fairfield end. It was also helped by the fact that there was only about 40% of the litter collected this time and there were no blatant fly-tips to be dealt with. The detailed statistics were as follows (where the numbers in brackets are the corresponding numbers for the spring clean-up):
- Number of volunteers participating Saturday = 15 (20).
- Number of volunteers participating Sunday = 8 (17).
- Number of volunteers participating more than once = 3 (8).
- Total volunteer-days = 23 (38).
- Total volunteers participating = 20 (29).
- Number of bags filled on Saturday (Levenshulme to Fairfield) = 26 (61).
- Number of bags filled on Sat/Sunday (Levenshulme to St Werburgh’s) = 28 (65).
- Total bags of litter collected = 54 (126).
These figures only tell half the story as they don’t take into account the amount of litter picked up in the months prior to these events. Undoubtedly there was significantly less removed before this clean-up as compared to the previous one; we hope that this all points to the Loop becoming less littered!
