Tidy Our Town: Chronicle & Echo launch campaign with Northants Litter Wombles to ‘break the cycle’

The Chronicle & Echo has today (February 20) launched a new campaign in collaboration with the Northants Litter Wombles, to “break the cycle” that has seen littering and fly tipping take a hold on our town.

The Northants Litter Wombles group was founded in the midst of the pandemic in early 2021, when dedicated members of the community came together with founder Nicola Elliott to fight an issue they were fed up with seeing.

Over the past three years, the volunteers – donning purple hi-vis jackets and bin bags – have collected tens of thousands of bags of litter and educated thousands of young people through their CLEAN Education Programme.

Now, with more than 3,700 members, the growing ‘purple army’ wants to see significant change in Northampton – working alongside this newspaper to continue sharing their important messages.

Each week a new interview will be published with a volunteer or member of the community who feels passionate about combating the problem and shining a light on the positive work of the Northants Litter Wombles.

‘It came as a shock’

To kickstart the Tidy Our Town campaign, Mark Watson, one of the six Northants Litter Wombles committee members, spoke to the Chronicle & Echo.

Mark first moved to the town in October 2022, more than a year-and-a-half on from when the volunteer group was launched.

Having moved from a low litter area in Oxfordshire to Upton, Mark shared that it did not take long before he and his family realised just how much of an issue littering and fly tipping was in Northampton.

The change came as a “shock” to him and he was pleased to come across the Northants Litter Wombles page following a quick search on Facebook.

Mark joined the Litter Wombles within a week of his move and feels he has seen visible improvements over the past year-and-a-half – but there is still a long way to go.

He adopted Sixfields Reservoir as an area of focus, as it was frequently left “trashed” with litter and fly tips that often remained untouched for months.

Working with West Northamptonshire Council, Mark says the local authority is now putting more effort into keeping the area clean – as well as putting other measures in the pipeline to protect the wildlife and environment there.

“It’s a good success story in the making,” he said.

The committee member believes the Litter Wombles’ CLEAN Education Programme is a “very important” part in “breaking the cycle of thinking it’s acceptable to throw litter on the ground”.

“It’s about educating children about the reasons why litter is bad,” Mark added. “It takes decades to rot down, gets washed into rivers, out into oceans and then into us and wildlife. We need to break the cycle.”

Mark believes it is promising that children are now using their initiative to educate their own families off the back of what they have learnt.

In the next instalment of Mark Watson’s interview, to be published on Wednesday (February 21), he shares what the Northants Litter Wombles want to see moving forward.

If you would like to get involved in the Tidy Our Town campaign, email [email protected].

To join the Northants Litter Wombles in their important work, visit the Facebook group here.