By Jill Stocks
Horsforth litter pickers were out in force over the weekend for the 5th annual Litter Free Leeds “Leeds Goes Purple” event.
The event ran from Friday 27th to Sunday 29th March with a number of organised group picks taking place across the city and many more individuals doing their own picks across the three days.
Last year 900 bags of litter were collected across the city as part of the initiative.
In Horsforth pickers of all ages gathered at Featherbank Primary School as children from the school, Aoibheann and Henry, and staff and families joined local residents to litter pick around the school and in the surrounding streets.
They gathered five purple bags of litter, aluminium cans and glass for recycling and a number of discarded vapes, as well as discovering flytipping to be reported to the council for removal.
Penny Pinn is a governor at Featherbank Primary and regularly picks litter in Horsforth.
She said: “We’re here on a cold and windy Sunday morning as part of Leeds Goes Purple event, Litter Free Leeds. This is the Featherbank family litter pick which is a regular occurence now every half term since last September.
“So we come out and we have a really good turnout and clear the streets around school of litter. The children really love it. It helps the environment and also we do a lot of recycling; the cans and the bottles and vapes all get sent off for recycling.”
Lara Rule is a teacher and SENCO at Featherbank School, and works alongside Penny on sustainability.
She said: “This is the fourth Sunday. We started in Autumn so we’ve done one each half term and it’s been growing. The last one was the biggest. We had about ten children. So it’s good. And they love it actually, it’s really nice, and we hope it will grow next year.”
Janice Martin is a local resident and regular litter picker who also joined the event on Sunday: “I usually pick with the Wednesday Gang and we’re a bit of a litter busting group. Anne Crosland is our main organiser for the group so off we go wherever she posts on the facebook page she’d like us to go.
“There’s a big group of us that go. I would say six to eight of us are regular attenders and there’s lots of us who can’t manage every Wednesday but do what we can. We spend a bit of time, usually two hours, picking up as much as we can in that area and then move on.
“But with events like this which is Leeds Goes Purple we are trying to get out and turn Leeds purple is the idea. So here we are filling bags with anybody who’d like to join us and leaving them around so that people can just see that actually this is the litter we’ve just picked up in such a short space of time.”
Horsforth’s litter pickers can regularly be spotted out and about filling purple bags and doing their best to keep the town tidy. Julia Holmes amassed this haul on one of her recent picks.
Dave Holgate is regularly out litter picking accompanied by his faithful friend Reggie. In the month of March alone they’ve collected 29 bags of litter, as well as a number of bulkier items being reported as fly tipping and items for recycling.
An additional Horsforth litter pick due to take place at the skate park in Horsforth Hall Park on Sunday afternoon was postponed due to forecast high winds and rain and will now take place this Saturday from 1pm to 3pm. Why not pop along and get involved in keeping the park looking its best?
Horsforth litter pickers are part of the wider Litter Free Leeds organisation, which was founded in 2017 and now has over 4,900 volunteers across 50 groups working hard to keep our communities litter free.
You can see more of what they do in this youtube video posted ahead of the 2026 Leeds Goes Purple campaign presented by Litter Free Leeds co-ordinator Sandra McLean and showing some of the volunteers at work across the city.
If you’d like to join the team of litter pickers in Horsforth check out the facebook page to see what they are up to or check out the Litter Free Leeds website for how to get involved across the city.
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