The Throckley Green Clean

Our first Green Clean event was held in the village of Throckley, to the west of Newcastle, in September 2018. The idea was thought up by national CPRE as a way of achieving two very worthwhile objectves – one to involve CPRE with local communities concerned about litter on their home patch, and the other to use the evidence collected to put pressure on the government to introduce a compulsory deposit return system on all bottles and cans.

Northumberland chair Colin Adsley co-ordinated efforts to organise the clearance which saw CPRE’s specialist deposit van, spitting out receipts as recyclables were fed into it by the local community. In total 28 volunteers collected 25 bulging bags of rubbish in just over 90 minutes with 10 bags of plastics, bottles and cans totalling 1,006 items fed into the collection vehicle.

The Throckley event was supported by Throckley Village Action Group, and its chair, John Allen, said: “I was very proud to see the volunteers turning up and taking pride in helping improve the local environment. “We had members of Sainsbury’s Throckley lending their help as volunteers too and hopefully this is the start of more efforts to improve the village.”

Throckley councillors Linda Wright and Stephen Fairlie also took part in the event with Green Clean earning their whole-hearted support. Linda commented, ‘It was a great thing to do and we applaud the efforts of CPRE Northumberland.’

Following this event, we were invited to do the same at Newbiggin-by-the-Sea, and both events were repeated in 2019.

When the Covid emergency is finally over, and with the Government dragging its feet over the promised deposit return system, we will look to repeat the Green Clean initiative in Northumberland once again.