'We clean up our city's playgrounds to give back'

The balaclava-clad crew has cleaned three of Liverpool's play areas

When Andrew Salim took his daughter to a Liverpool playground which was in dire need of a makeover, he decided to use his skills to do something about it.

As head of the family-run company Central Waste Liverpool, Mr Salim's job is to keep Liverpool's streets clean. But this year, he has also begun volunteering his time and money to clean the city's play areas.

With the help of his paid crew of orange balaclava-wearing cleaners and other volunteers, Mr Salim has transformed three of Liverpool's playgrounds since February.

He told BBC Radio 4: "You feel a sense of pride doing it and a sense of pride being put back into the community because everyone cares about the playgrounds."

"If somewhere is clean, you're less inclined to make it dirty," he added.

The crew began with the clean-up of Newsham Park, with the video they made of the process going on to amass 1.8 million views on social media.

Mr Salim said: "Off the back of that we had a whole flood of support off private companies and other volunteers saying, 'I want to help out'.

"I realised - we can do something bigger now."

The group wears balaclavas to maintain their anonymity

Balaclava anonymity

The growing group went on to revamp Aigburth Vale Park and, most recently, took on its biggest project to date - cleaning the Anfield Sports & Community Centre.

"To turn it around in one day, it couldn't have been done without the private companies and the volunteers," Mr Salim said.

"We had to get the Merseyside Fire Department to fill up our jet washers again.

"It's just nice to see the impact on the community and bring people together."

As for why he and his crew wear orange balaclavas while working, Mr Salim said it was because the initiative was "not about us".

"It allowed us to be ourselves without the pressure of being recorded," he added.

"When you think balaclavas, we all think of something sinister.

"But nothing sinister here, we're just doing a bit of tidying up."