Twelve bags of rubbish were collected by ten volunteers at the Calverley Cleanup on Monday, writes Anne Akers.
The hour-long litter pick took place as part of Keep Britain Tidy’s #GBSpringClean.
Volunteers picked up litter in the village as well as the entrance to the woods.
Organiser Anne Akers, a regular West Leeds Dispatch contributor, said that while there were a few bottles and wrappers, the main litter problem was cigarette ends which were either thrown from cars or dropped by pedestrians. She added:
“Calverley is generally quite tidy, apart from a few hotspots like the main roads and entrances to the woods where people park and throw wrappers from their cars.
“However, one thing we found everywhere were cigarette ends, hundreds of them, so many we didn’t have time, or quite frankly the energy, to pick them all up.
“Smokers may think these filters are only small and that they can just throw them where they want, but they are made from cellulose acetate and, when used include the toxins from cigarettes. They can take up to ten years to decompose.”
The volunteers included members of Calverley Horticultural Society and Calverley in Bloom.
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