Friday 1st July 10am. Cardiff Friday Morning Project in Llanedeyrn Stream Clean Success

We returned to Llanedeyrn this Friday to the finish clearance of a stream and a woodland on Llanedeyrn Road just off Circle Way East.

Wellies were worn by one and waders for the rest. We made such a good go of it last week with the general litter collecting some 13 bags and about 200kg of assorted rubbish.

This week our aim was to collect any more rubbish in the wood and to completely clear the culvert/drain of blockages. Armed with shovels, spades and a mud rake Dave and John filled up our sturdy blue bags with accumulated sediment which I dragged up the hill to deposit along the path. This would prevent the material from being washed back into the stream taking us back to square 1. Johns aim was to clear the roof:

Disclaimer- As you can tell, at the time when John stepped onto the squeeky toy buried deep in the sediment this was hilarious.
John realised while tackling the roof of the drain that the roof although solid, was also iron grills and perhaps not so safe or sensible to try and shovel it off from above. We then scraped it off the bars into the blue bags for deposition. Meanwhile, Dave concentrated on removing the inflow area:

While this was ongoing, Ron and Julie were removing loads of rubbish from up stream and in the woods:

By the end of the shovelling work, we had shifted over 40 bags of sediment, 4 bags of rubbish plus one recycling bag, 1 trolley, part of a metal-framed bed, part of a record player, 2 carpets, 2 unknown tools, 1 spade handle, 1 plastic garden container and a few unidentifiable bits of metal. All rubbish has been removed again by Cardiff CC Parks Waste Services.

Importantly, we cleared the stream drain, back down to the original concrete base. Unfortunately, the weight of the sediment had broken one side of the grills downwards and had pushed in the metal grills towards the drain itself. This has been reported back and will be repaired.

All in all we enjoyed ourselves and helped unblock a drain through a beautiful woodland. We hope to come back in the winter and put in some bank supports hopefully using coppiced materials from the woods.



For any more information call Chris on 07717 412 270 or chris.partridge@keepwalestidy.org
We'll be back out again next Friday, location TBC.

View Friday 1st July Llanedeyrn Nant Pent bach clean up in a larger map

29.06.11 Keep Cathays Tidy Litterpick

Today we helped out Cathays Community Centre who are keen to set up a group in Cathays to help tidy it up. We were joined by a large group from Barclaycard and spent around 2 hours on bin day.

We witnessed masses of bags which had been torn open along several streets by, we presume, seagulls. The cause almost exactly the same; food waste in normal litter bags. in several streets, notably Letty Street, rows of bags were torn open revealing food waste and items such as plastic bottles, paper, cardboard and glass all of which are recyclable.

We cleared several of these up and even popped into one Landlords Office just along from one such property, who was advertising for new lets, replied with "Students init".

Cardiff County Council Street Cleansing do an excellent job and I have no doubt that these streets will be cleared, but we can make this so much easier by putting the right items in the right bins.

All in all, we collected 11 bags of rubbish, 5 bags of recycling, 1 tv and 2 plastic chairs. All of this was removed by a team from Cardiff County Council's Street Cleansing Department.

We hope to perform more litterpicks across Cathays from Cathays Community Centre and welcome any volunteer interest. With our presence we hope to be able to effect behaviour change to help Keep Cathays Tidy. For more information contact wither myself or Joanne Sutton from Cathays Communiy centre on 029 2037 3144 or email via admin@cathays.org.uk

23.06.11 Trelai Park Clean Up Woodlands High School, C1st & KWT

Last Thursday I had a real pleasure to be invited along to help a class from Woodlands High school in Ely to clean up Trelai Park just outside the School. Anne from Communities First got in touch some time ago to help out with the event and it was a tremendous success.

As per usual, I started off with a walkabout and it was a bit stinking even though bins were present. We all met up at the car and had a chat about litter, health and safety and the fact we were going to split the rubbish into recycling and non-recycling.

The park around the skating area was stinking with mainly fast food and plastic bottles and we cleared this up pretty sharpish. We then headed across the meadow area and talked about why the grass was left longer here with a little tree ID thrown in for good measure (I think they'll know ash now for the rest of their lives). As the rain came down we retreated back to class for tea, biscuits and a toilet break before resuming the pick in sunshine. The last part of the pick was held mainly in the shrubline alongside the schoolgates which accumulated a great deal of litter, including yards of stripped cabling and dozens of bags of dog poo (these can go in the normal bins you know!!!). Altogether, the class of 9 collected 10 bags of rubbish and 6 bags of recycling.

Once again, we were supported by Parks Waste Services who came along and collected away the rubbish afterwards. One of the class, Kieron, is currently gaining regular work experience with Brian, one of the fellows who regularly collects our stuff.

Afterwards, the class got together and came up with some quotes for the event and are as follows:

• LF
I really enjoyed it. I liked being outside of school for a few hours!

• AM
We got changed to go to Trelai park. We put gloves on, then we put jackets on. Chris and Anne were there to pick up rubbish. We were in groups and we had to work in a team. We picked up packets and cans. It was good. I enjoyed picking up the rubbish.

• AP
I enjoyed it because we’re keeping our country clean.

• ZA
It was really good. We filled loads of bags.

- I could hardly say it better myself.

June 2011. HSBC Staff help to give a Roath Community Garden a Spring Clean

Ten volunteer South-East Wales branch managers from HSBC put down their abaci, took off their ties and rolled up their sleeves to provide a much needed spring clean for a community garden in Roath.

Under local advice from Roath Acting Together (RAT-pickers), staff and volunteers from Keep Wales Tidy decided to tackle the community garden area near the Mackintosh Sports Institute in Roath. This beautiful, yet very small community garden area has of late been blighted by a tremendous volume of flytipping. This included snooker cue cases, umbrellas, bags of clothes, loose clothes, drinks cans and bottles, used nappies, shoes, and several bags of garden waste. All in all a daunting task for any group. Following a quick warm up litterpicking the Mackintosh car park, the group set out to the main task. The early blue skies and sunshine soon turned black but the downpours did not stop the volunteers’ enthusiasm for the job who collected an astonishing 37 bags of rubbish and 12 bags of recyclables. All the waste was removed by one of Cardiff County Council’s Street Cleansing teams.

Chris Bastian, HSBC Local Business Manager from Brigend, commented:

“We had great fun today knowing that the work that we all did here is of benefit to the local community and may even help kick-start a local group to restore it”.

Chris Partridge, Keep Wales Tidy’s Tidy Towns Project Officer for Cardiff, added:

“It was a great day out for the staff at HSBC, knowing that what they did today could lead to renewed interest in taking care of this gem of a site”.

Martin Gower from RAT-pickers said:

“I hope that we will be able to do come back in September to encourage this as a wildlife garden area and today’s clean up is a massive step towards us achieving this.”



For more information call Chris Partridge on 07717 412 270 or chris.partridge@keepwalestidy.org.