Volunteers in Walsall keeping their town tidy
A group of community-spirited residents were fed up with the amount of litter being dumped in their area. But rather than just sit and complain about it, they got out there, collected it themselves and hence the Wombles of Willenhall were born.
They’ve been confronted with all kinds of horrors including dead animals and dirty nappies but a team of dedicated volunteers remain committed to keeping their part of Walsall clean and tidy.
The ‘Wombles of Willenhall’ have collected thousands of bags full of litter that everyday folk have left behind since they formed two years ago in response to a social media post encouraging residents to join Walsall Council operatives.
Members of the group concentrate their efforts in and around Willenhall town centre – usually on Sunday mornings – while others do solo picks elsewhere in the town.
During a day of action on Wednesday , the Wombles collected more than 10 bags full of trash in just an hour.
Council officers were also out in Willenhall asking residents, shoppers, traders and businesses asking what improvements they wanted to see in the area.
The Wombles said as well as rubbish such as discarded cigarette butts, takeaway wrappers, cans and bottles, they’ve discovered people will dump household waste and even soiled nappies.
They sometimes even have to deal with dead rats or foxes during their clean-up operations.
But despite the unpleasant aspects of the role, members described the volunteering as addictive and want to encourage more people to take pride in their area.
Maz Noakes, aged 69, said: “I’ve lived in Willenhall all my life and I’ve become very passionate about being a ‘Womble’.
“We’ve been doing this for two years. A litter pick had been arranged and I just turned up and that was it really.
“What happens now is we could be driving along and I notice rubbish everywhere and start pointing it out.
“There’s a few of us who meet every Sunday on a car park and we start litter picking from there while there are other people doing their own thing elsewhere.
“We have someone who collates how many bags we collect each week and we’ve filled more than 2,500 so far this year.
“It gets addictive actually and I really enjoy it. We try to get more people active and it’s about encouragement.
“And people do appreciate it. On our Facebook page, people will come on and say ‘well done’ or drive past and honk their horns.”
Walsall Council has appointed ‘volunteer co-ordinators’ to support and help organise them, providing them with bags and pickers. Authority staff even volunteer themselves.
The authority has introduced a number of initiatives to tackle littering and fly-tipping, such as increased fines while eight extra ‘barrowmen’ will operate across the borough.
It also pledged to use Government’s High Street Community Clean-up funding of £20,000 to provide Community Payback, groups and volunteers with equipment to enable them to tackle issues in their areas.
Councillor Oliver Butler, portfolio holder for clean and green, joined the Wombles on their pick and said he often likes to get out the office and join such groups.
He said: “This really is the embodiment of community spirit.
“We will do what we can, we are putting additional resources into street cleaning, eight barrow-men and making sure our sweepers are manned up, but we can’t be everywhere all the time.
“I believe one of our employees put out on Facebook ‘come and join us on one of our picks if you don’t like it’ and it started from there.
“Then we found so many groups were starting up that we needed some co-ordination to organise them in terms of providing bags, litter pickers and where they were going.
“We have recruited volunteer co-ordinators who are going to work with local groups, school and the Wombles so we can try to build people taking responsibility for picking up litter locally amongst themselves.”
Anyone interested in joining or setting up a community litter picking group, can email the Environmental Improvement Team on cleanandgreen@walsall.gov.uk or ask for us on 01922 653344.
