Our Campaigns and Social Innovation Manager Heather McLaughlin has recently pushed out our first sponsorship brochure for Spring Clean Scotland. Here she talks about her Spring Clean journey, the importance of litter picks for communities and local authority’s across Scotland and the need for funding to continue to inspire people to take positive action to tackle our litter emergency.
#SpringCleanScotland 2025 will be my eighth year supporting people to tackle litter in their communities. Over the years the campaign has grown massively as we expand the network of organisations we work with across Scotland. Spring Clean is firmly in the calendar of our key partners including our Community Clean Up Hub Network, local authorities and public sector organisations, small and large businesses and schools.
Every year we set ourselves targets including ensuring there is activity in every local authority across Scotland. We also try to identify quirky events and new approaches to litter picking each year. With themed weeks and new partners joining us these have included a visit from the Poly Roger, a plastic fishing punt (which travelled with volunteer litter pickers from East to West along the canals!), a launch event with Dennis the Menace and Gnasher at the top of Dundee Law, a combined pledge of 1,500,000 minutes by volunteers across Scotland (and in case you’re wondering that’s over 400,000 plays of I’m Gonna Be (500miles)) and an internal SpórSgudal challenge.
Working closely with our Education and Learning Team we’ve also introduced and coordinated Live Lessons for schools across the whole country to add additional context to the litter picks many of them commit to doing.
Over the last two years we’ve developed and rolled-out our innovative Litter Leagues to add a competitive edge for young people to get involved too. Through this initiative we’ve engaged with more youth organisations including Scouts Scotland.
One of my favourite memories of Spring Clean is the Source to Sea week we ran with partners along the Tay, getting out on the water to litter pick as well as targeting hotspots on the shore alongside the river and its estuary and hosting an educational engagement event focusing on litter's journey from ‘source to sea’ for Dundee schools at the V&A Museum.
We have also faced challenge over the past decade. The personal disappointment of cancelling Spring Clean 2020 when the pandemic disturbed our normal way of doing things was hard to deal with, while the ongoing challenge of covering our costs to inspire and support communities and businesses across Scotland to carry out litter picks is our latest challenge.
Over the years we have also identified some new trends to tackle. Litter pickers highlighted to us that they were finding more and more single-use vapes during their clean ups. We have now used this information to gather our own data which has been used to help bring forward a ban of the sale of single-use vapes.
This year we reinstated the Spring Clean Quaich – paused back in 2011 – to encourage healthy competition between Scotland’s 32 local authorities – all of which in some way support volunteers with litter picking by supplying equipment, disposing of waste or providing advice.
Next year is Keep Scotland Beautiful’s 25th anniversary as an independent Scottish charity – prior to that we formed part of Keep Britain Tidy. We know that this presents us with an opportunity. An opportunity to increase engagement in Spring Clean by 25% perhaps?
It seems a lot, and is approximately 11,000 more volunteers than last year. But we believe that with your help, and the passion and pride across Scotland for our beautiful country, we can achieve this.
Now we’re looking for a funder to help us continue developing the campaign and supporting those taking action. Over the years we’ve had a variety of funders and supporters, and we know that Spring Clean is at its strongest when we have an enthusiastic partner and healthy budget to communicate, promote, visit, support and celebrate what communities and businesses across Scotland are achieving as they work to tackle our litter emergency.
Crucially, as a national environmental charity, we ensure the enormous amount of action and hours dedicated by volunteers in local communities are recognised at a national level and taken into account when we consider the time, effort and cost to cleaning up the mess left behind by those selfish individuals.
It’s been an honour to be part of the team bringing you the Spring Clean each year and whilst we can never say it enough, thank you again to all those that support the campaign and help us.
I have one simple ask. If you have taken part in a clean up event, benefited from our support or been inspired by Spring Clean activities – please help us secure the funding we need to make #SpringCleanScotland 2025 the biggest and best yet.
As an individual you could consider making a small personal donation to support our work, and allow us to inspire others to join in with Spring Clean.
Or, if you have a business or work for a large company, consider putting us forward as your charity of choice.
You can read our sponsorship document to find out more about the support we need, or reach out to me and I'd be happy to have a chat with you about it.
For me, and my team, this isn’t just a job. We care passionately about our country, about changing the habits which have led to Scotland’s litter emergency and we know that we can, and must, do more to inspire action. But, we need funding to do this, and to make our dreams of a clean, green sustainable Scotland come true.
Let’s smash this make Spring Clean 2025 the biggest and most impactful ever.
We are looking for financial support which will provide practical benefits to your business including aligning with your Corporate Social Responsibility goals and showcasing your commitment to environmental action and community improvement, providing employee engagement opportunities, improving relationships and developing new partnerships with local communities and genuinely empowering people to improve the places they love.
If you are interested and want to support Spring Clean, get in touch with Heather now for more information.
