College launches litter picking project

Staff and students at Gower College Swansea are rolling up their sleeves and donning gloves and high-vis jackets as they begin a new litter picking initiative around the Gorseinon campus.

This community project is being driven by Cllr Kelly Roberts, who is a former student of the College, and Assistant Learning Area Manager Jenny Hill.

“I’ve been very impressed with the enthusiasm of the staff and students at the College and the way they have really bought into this new initiative,” says Cllr Roberts.

The supervised litter picking will begin week commencing 15 January and will involve each tutor group spending one hour patrolling the areas around Belgrave Road.

“This is a great opportunity for our students to take positive action on a really important issue – looking after the environment,” adds Jenny. “As well as giving something back to our local community, they can also develop key soft skills such as reliability and commitment which are so important to demonstrate when applying for university places or jobs. And of course, there is an undeniable ‘feel-good factor’ that comes with keeping the local area tidy and building good relationships with our neighbours.”

“Litter and keeping our city clean and tidy is a responsibility of all of us, not just the Council,” says Cllr Mark Thomas, Cabinet Member for Environment Services. “I’m delighted that Gower College Swansea and their students are taking a positive step to help keep their community clean.

“In recent years we have introduced litter enforcement officers to help tackle the issue of people selfishly throwing litter on the ground and this has had a positive impact. What we want is for people to do the right thing by using litter bins. This will avoid the need to issue fixed penalties and the benefit will be a clean city.”