Grantham Rivercare back on the road

Grantham RiverCare resumed for post lockdown clean-ups having been away for 189 days.

Not able to work in their usual open format for 189 days due to COVID-19 restrictions, Grantham RiverCare returned for some much-needed post lockdown clean-up.

To ensure their work is COVID secure, they had to work in groups of six. Over the three weekends, a total of twenty-one volunteers (#riverheroes) gave 72 hours of their time to get our adapted stretch of the River Witham, from Bridge End Road to Harrowby Weir, back to looking loved again.

However, absence makes the litter piles higher and, in the three trips since July, we have collected around 400kg of assorted items which include:-

Road work barriers

Shopping trolleys (5)

Bikes (8)

Radio cassette player

Road signs

Footballs (numerous)

An illegal homemade Crayfish trap (EA notified)

Live bank cards (Police contacted)

A bag of shoes!

Personal documents of HMP Lincoln releasee (Police contacted)

A cash box – empty!

Car seat

Sink

Various items of furniture

Numerous traffic cones

A selection of pans

And that’s not including the 106 glass bottles, 76 plastic bottles and 304 cans. The cans are donated to the Helipads for Hospitals campaign.

Grantham Rivercare has now reached 96 group clean-ups over the last fifteen years. Fingers crossed they can hit 100 by our 16th anniversary in October.

In addition to cleaning the river, this time they moved into nearby streets, cleaning pavements, gutters and blocked drains, which could all end up as urban flood risks as well as causing litter to flow into the river via street drains.

COVID-19 is having an impact on the riverside, creating a ‘litter pandemic’. We have seen the careless disposal of single use face masks, wipes and plastic gloves.

Please don’t drop your PPE litter!

An extra thank you to Gary and his pair of river look outs that regularly filled up Gary’s Canadian Canoe (the floating skip!) and to SKDC Street Scene for their support in supplying bags and collecting the fruits of our litter labours.

RiverCare BeachCare (East Anglia) is a Keep Britain Tidy project funded in our region by Anglian Water. Currently supporting 50 local community groups to litter pick, undertake citizen science projects and act as guardians of their local watercourse or beach.