Pants among rubbish collected from March river

Volunteers collect five bags of rubbish and one pair of pants from a town river in litter sweep.

On a very blustery Sunday morning March RiverCare, a local group of volunteers, set about cleaning-up a stretch of the river Nene by removing litter including plastics and other bulky items.

Their work was part of Keep Britain Tidy’s RiverCare and BeachCare programme.

This small team were able to clear five bags of litter from their stretch of the Nene, alongside a traffic cone, a gas canister, and a pair of pants! Although the bulk of the litter collected was discarded food packaging or sweet wrappers, on such a windy day these light pieces of litter would have easily made it into the waterway where they can easily cause damage to local wildlife or will eventually be washed out to the ocean.

A big thank you goes to the staff at The Ship who provided the volunteers with a welcome coffee.

The March RiverCare group is one of almost 50 such groups which part of the RiverCare are and BeachCare programme, which is run by environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy, and funded by Anglian Water.

The programme supports local groups to tackle litter, carry out wildlife surveys and habitat improvements to make a real difference to their local environment.

The group is going to find out when the banks are due to be cut back before setting a date for their August litter pick. Stay up to day with our event over on the group’s Facebook page.