A joint operation between Litter Action Group for Ealing Residents (LAGER Can) and Friends of the Grand Union Canal (FoGUC) has seen what has been described as “biblical” amounts of litter and junk being removed from the Paddington Arm towpath of the Grand Union Canal between Greenford and Southall.
Working together in association with the Canal & River Trust (CRT), the team of volunteers managed to fill a whole barge with all the rubbish they collected and also revealed within Ealing there are no bins on the canal.
They worked their way along the towpath from Ruislip Road to Spikes Bridge.
During the clean up, dozens of bags were filled with rubbish including bottles and cans as well as other debris. This all went into the Canal & River Trust barge, the Pride of London which followed the team of volunteers.
FoGUC’s Lorraine Leckenby who came up with the idea to do the clean up said: “I’ve been doing long runs along the canal recently and I was shocked to see the state of the towpath. Having the CRT barge with us obviously made a massive difference to the amount of rubbish we could collect, as we didn’t have to carry it to a collection point, saving valuable time. It meant we could remove a mattress from the bushes along with loads of old metal laying around from various magnet fishers.”
A Taskforce operation run by the CRT three days earlier resulted in volunteers filling 60 sacks of rubbish from a 500-metre stretch of the towpath south of Hayes Bridge in Southall. It has been reported that this area attracts groups of drinkers, many bringing takeaways. In a survey of LAGER Can’s 2,000 members, it was voted Ealing borough’s worst litter hotspot.
Mark Percy, who volunteers with the Canal & River Trust and LAGER Can, said: “It’s hardly a surprise the towpath is filthy given that there’s not a single litter bin to be found anywhere along the 11 miles of canal in the borough of Ealing. Brent Council has bins on its section of the towpath in Park Royal, but in Ealing that seems to be an alien concept. Cleaning up is left to volunteers, with support from the CRT.”
Cathy Swift, chair of LAGER Can, added: “There are so many factors contributing to the biblical quantities of rubbish we find along the canal in our borough that we feel a multi-agency approach is going to be needed to identify and deal with the causes. In the shorter term we are delighted to be joining forces with FoGUC to formulate a rubbish removal plan.”
