The Abinit! litter picking volunteers were back at Reynold’s Way to help to get rid of some of the litter that had been blowing around the streets.

Some of it ends up in the hedge running alongside the Reynold’s Way Supermarket.

Before.

After.

Helen and Lynne continue to organise these events. There were about fourteen bags full of litter collected after about two hours. The next Abinit! litter pick starts at Abingdon Lock on Saturday 19th October. There will be impromptu picks before then.

Members of the Abingdon Carbon Cutters (Cutting Plastic) group were encouraging people to unwrap produce outside the large Supermarket on the Marcham Road in Abingdon this morning as part of a Mass Unwrap.

After removing single-use plastics from their shopping, customers could put purchases into their own containers, bags etc. The plastics were collected and returned to the supermarket. One lady brought back all the plastic packaging she had collected this year.

The emphasis was on the unnecessary plastic, not the supermarket.

The hope is to encourage the customers and the supermarket and its suppliers to reduce single-use plastics.

There has already been a huge reduction in the use of single use plastic shopping bags.

Walking in Abingdon this afternoon my wife commented how bad the pollution from traffic was down the Vineyard.

The air pollution used to be concentrated in the town centre shopping streets before the Abingdon Integrated Transport Strategy (AbITS), implemented in 2006,  started holding traffic outside the town centre in roads like the Vineyard and Ock Street.

On investigation I found that the VWHDC council monitors levels of pollutants around the town centre. Monitoring tubes are fixed to lamp posts. They are exposed for a month at a time and sent to the laboratory for analysis and reporting.

One monitoring tube is in the Vineyard, and like most of the tubes around Abingdon town centre it shows a slowly decreasing trend in nitrogen dioxide levels.

This data is available at https://oxfordshire.air-quality.info.

We are back in Abingdon after a few days away. There were blue skies as we arrived back in town.

The Vale of White Horse District Council recently launched an anti idling campaign to improve air quality. They say If people are stopped for more than a minute or parked then they should turn their engines off.

They also say

* 1 minute of idling produces 150 balloons of harmful pollutants.
* People inside cars are exposed to high levels of air pollution, with children especially at risk of harmful effects.

On June 29th the government announced higher fines for vehicles idling while parked. It was already an offence under the Road Traffic (Vehicle Emissions) (Fixed Penalty) (England) Regulations (Statutory Instrument 2002 No. 1808).