West Lothian sweeps up third spot in spring clean
Schools, businesses and local volunteers all played their part as West Lothian was ranked third in Scotland for participation in the Keep Scotland Beautiful annual Spring Clean campaign.
Thousands of volunteers give up their time to support efforts to keep West Lothian clean and tidy throughout the year and this was definitely evident during the Spring Clean.
In West Lothian alone, there were 285 events registered, that saw 2323 Volunteers take part including the involvement of 36 schools and 19 local businesses during the Spring Clean.
Bankton Primary School was one of the schools who took part in the Spring Clean with pupils playing an active role in keeping their community clean all year round.
Staff from the council's Cleaner Communities Team recently visited the school to thank pupils for their hard work and demonstrated how to use some of the machinery they deploy in their daily work to tackle litter across West Lothian.
Executive councillor for the environment Tom Conn joined the group on the day and thanked pupils and staff at Bankton and other participants for their efforts.
Councillor Conn said: "Thank you to everyone who puts in time to keep our communities clean from litter. It was heartening to see so many people take part in the Spring Clean this year in West Lothian, demonstrating there is an ever growing understanding that littering blights our landscape and impacts all of us.
This was evident meeting the pupils at Bankton who have done a great job in the past year, conducting litter picks in their local community."
The challenge of tackling littering is not limited to the Spring Clean with West Lothian Council keen to ensure that the anti-littering message is spread all year round.
From September 2023 to August 2024, West Lothian Council uplifted bagged waste following community litter clean ups weighing approximately 541 tonnes.
In addition to carrying out regular street cleansing operations on a daily basis, the Cleaner Communities Team also look to support local volunteers who carry out regular community clean ups, providing necessary equipment, and disposing of the material collected while also signposting these groups towards funding opportunities.
West Lothian Litter Pickers (WLLP) is the largest volunteer group in the area with over 4000 registered volunteers who organise group litter picks on a regular basis via the WLLP Facebook group.
Councillor Conn added: "We all want West Lothian's streets towns and villages to be clean and tidy and we all need to work together to achieve this.
"West Lothian is very fortunate to have a large network of volunteers committed to tackling littering and groups such as West Lothian Litter Pickers must be thanked for their tireless efforts across the area.
"The easiest way that you can help is to always put your litter in a bin. There are 2000 litter bins across West Lothian, but we can't have bins on every street so if you don't see one nearby, please take your litter with you and dispose of it appropriately at home."
Keep Scotland Beautiful has developed a national online Community Litter Hub full of information and resources from across all of Scotland to support you to tackle litter and littering behaviour in your community: https://www.keepscotlandbeautiful.org/community-litter-hub/
For more information on the local Don't Waste West Lothian campaign please visit: https://www.westlothian.gov.uk/dontwaste
