Surfers Against Sewage have an annual Autumn Beach Clean, which this year includes rivers for the first time. They say ‘We want to tackle the problem of pollution further upstream and highlight the direct link between all UK towns, villages and cities and the ocean around us. The scale of this clean – the biggest across the UK – will provide us with vital data to inform the Government’s decisions on a new deposit return scheme. We will be able to specifically show the range of bottles and cans which end up polluting our waterways, and which need to be included in a new deposit return scheme‘.

The River & River Bank Clean up in Abingdon is a local joint initiative between Abingdon Cuts Plastic, AbiBinit, and Kingfisher Canoe Club.

I joined Helen on a litter pick near Reynolds Way this morning.

Some people stopped to talk about litter. “You have a thankless job there,” one lady told me. “People just throw their empty takeaway out of the car window and don’t take it home.”

There was a lot of litter thrown into the hedge next to the Open 7 Days Supermarket. Helen has already arranged for a couple of  new bins to be put in useful places. Removing this hedge and replacing it with some wisteria and a bin would also help.

There were other litter hot spots – areas down small lanes, and round corners where empty beer and cider bottles and cans still hung around after the drinkers had gone.

The Next AbiBinit! Litter Picking Initiative is Saturday 29th September. There is also a big Spring Clean all round Abingdon in the Spring.

There is a page on the Friends of Abingdon web site for the AbiBinit! Litter Picking Initiative. They will help organise group litter picks, and have one on Saturday 25th August. The meeting point is at Reynolds Way at 10am.

Here in the town centre you are normally never further than thirty paces from the nearest litter bin. But there are still some people who do not find them, particularly when it comes to coffee containers and styrofoam food containers.

Not all litter bins have the word LITTER on them. Some of them have a picture of a person dropping litter into a bin.

Others have no LITTER word or picture. (Extra points for spying one of these.)

The VWHDC (Vale of White Horse District Council) sent out this picture from May 2018 of two mattresses left outside the Sue Ryder charity shop. It was part of a press release warning against leaving donations out of hours at charity shops.

The usual course of action would be to arrange for the mattresses to be taken to a registered waste and recycling centre so they could be disposed of legally.

Initially the person who left the mattresses outside the shop was given a £240 fixed penalty notice with the option to pay in installments. That was not paid, and was followed by a court summons and the total bill with fines and costs went up to £1300.

Cllr Elaine Ware, Cabinet Member for Housing and Environment at VWHDC said: “If you wish to donate items to charity you must check first that they are happy to accept them.  If you simply dump goods next to a shop then you are fly-tipping and could face a fine or prosecution.”

Even more costly was a donation to Acacia UK in Abingdon that was set alight. The shop is still boarded up eleven months later.

There is a planning application (dated 1st August 2018) for the shop to ‘Strip out of modern materials following a fire to inspect historic materials and form/agree repair plan.’