Community Litter Workshops take place

We recently hosted the first two of our five Community Litter Workshops for people across Scotland to voice their concerns and learn more about Scotland’s litter emergency.

Delivered as part of our support for the Scottish Government’s National Litter and Flytipping Strategy, our first workshop took place online for people from Aberdeen on 7 February.

The second workshop, for people in Dumfries and Galloway, also took place online the following day on 8 February.

As well as learning more about littering issues, attendees also discussed and planned a first step to tackle litter in their communities, and help shape what our future workshops might look like.

The workshops covered the trends associated with and the problems of litter, the wider impacts of poor environmental quality and then built confidence to develop an effective plan to monitor and tackle the litter problem. Participants also answered questions through Mentimeter to support us to develop and improve on our workshops going forward.

One attendee from the Aberdeen workshop said: “Excellent and very helpful workshop. Gained additional knowledge, more motivated to help in addressing the issue of litter in my community, brilliant sharing of information.”

Feedback was similarly positive from the Dumfries and Galloway workshop, with an attendee saying: “The workshop has helped me to be more aware about litter problems. Litter emergency is real and dangerous. I am optimistic in order to join activities for helping."

Heather McLaughlin, our Campaigns Coordinator, said: “It’s great to hear such positive feedback from our first two Community Litter Workshops.

“The Scottish Litter Survey showed 85% of people agree that they want more efforts to prevent litter in their area so workshops like these will be crucial in helping our communities reverse the country’s litter emergency.

“We’re determined to play our part and it’s inspiring to hear so many people are planning on using the discussions to take action in their local communities.”

The remaining workshops are now fully booked, however you can play your part in reversing the litter emergency by taking part in Spring Clean Scotland 2024, which takes place from 15 March to 28 April.