A47 litter-picking group in need of more volunteers

Pride in Our Community Association Peterborough has been litter picking in the laybys along the A47

A volunteer litter-picking group that cleans up laybys along the A47 needs more help due to the high volume of rubbish.

Eighteen months ago, Mark Fishpool started the voluntary litter-picking group, Pride in Our Community Association Peterborough, to clean the streets around the city and plant flower beds.

In December last year, he started the A47 Peterborough clean-up campaign. The team has now grown to nearly 50 volunteers.

The group meets up on weekends and on average more than 50 bin bags of rubbish are collected.

The group is led by Mark Fishpool (l) and has collected tyres, alcohol bottles, drug cannisters and plastic car parts

Mr Fishpool from Dogsthorpe, Peterborough, is a self-employed classic car restorer.

He said the team find the activity “therapeutic”.

“Most of our volunteers, about 70% of them are ladies.

“So far, we have done quite a few laybys along the A47... The stretch between Wansford and Peterborough is really bad.

“We collect a lot of tyres, plastic parts of cars. In fact the other week, we collected a huge pile of car parts and joked that we could glue it all together and form a new car. And we also find money occasionally.

“But the rubbish paints such a bad picture for anyone driving into Peterborough and we want to change it."

The group needs more volunteers due to high volume of rubbish

'Forty bottles of alcohol'

The group said it was increasingly finding bottles of alcohol including vodka and gin, and said it was “frightening” to imagine drivers drinking while behind the wheel.

“At one litter pick a week ago near the Paston layby, we collected 40 bottles of alcohol,” Mr Fishpool said.

“We are also collecting lots of nitrous oxide canisters along the parkways. Again very worrying if drivers are using them.”

Castor bypass along the A47 has been called a "fly-tipping hotspot"

The group also now collects rubbish from the streams that run behind the parkways, and has called the ones behind the Castor bypass a fly-tipping “hotspot”.

“We have so far spent 80 hours cleaning it.

"We have collected many cans of oil from [the streams] as well. It’s not great that people think it’s OK to dump oil in the streams and threaten marine life,” Mr Fishpool said.

The Peterborough City Council has supported the campaign by providing the group with bin bags and disposing of the litter that is collected.

“We are doing a public service and appreciate the support we are getting,” he said.

Yet Mr Fishpool added that the group has had to litter pick more regularly in the week due to the high volume of rubbish, and has appealed for more volunteers.