Tidy Our Town: Northants Litter Wombles founder celebrates the 84,000 bags collected over three years

The founder of the Northants Litter Wombles wants to celebrate the more than 84,000 purple bags that volunteers have filled over the past three years, in the third Tidy Our Town campaign story.

Nicola Elliott’s litter picking journey began a year before the ‘purple army’ was formed, when she set up her own village group where she lives in West Haddon.

The group used to pay particular attention to a nearby layby in Crick and over the course of four weekends, they would typically collect 160 bags of litter.

The start of the Wombles stemmed from Nicola seeing a negative social media post about the amount of litter that remained after some flooding in January 2021.

As people expressed their disgust online, Nicola said she was happy to go along and clear it with her equipment – and asked if anyone else wanted to join.

After a lot of interest, it sparked the idea that people across the entire county may be interested in doing their bit.

With litter picking friends that had set up wider groups in other regions, Nicola described the way they “held her hand” while she got it off the ground.

‘We’re on track for our best February ever’

The Northants Litter Wombles have a great way of tracking how many bags of litter have been collected by their volunteers, with Nicola posting weekly online updates to keep people in the know about the group’s progress.

As of last Sunday (February 25), 84,203 bags of litter had been collected since the group was formed in 2021.

“We’re on track for our best February ever since we started,” Nicola told the Chronicle & Echo.

A handy online form and nearly 40 individual Litter Wombles groups for different areas across the county makes it simple to track progress – and Veolia also has a form for people in postcodes NN1 to NN5 to alert them to any purple bags that need collecting.

When asked if she imagined the scale the group would grow to when she founded it three years ago, Nicola said: “Absolutely not. I did it at a time when people couldn’t really do much else, other than go for daily walks. People were looking for reasons to go outside in the fresh air.”

With 350 members accumulated in just four days, Nicola called on others to help her establish the group alongside juggling her full-time job.

The Northants Litter Wombles community predominantly interacts on Facebook, with people sharing pictures of their work and commending others for what they have achieved.

“We try and encourage people to share positive posts and good news stories,” said Nicola. “We like seeing before and after photos and what difference they’ve made.

“We like to see kids litter picking as they’re our future. We do a lot to educate young people around not littering in the first place.”

Visit the Chronicle & Echo website on Thursday (February 29) for the second instalment of Nicola Elliott’s interview for the Tidy Our Town campaign.

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

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