During the month of August, we celebrate National Dog Day, a day of recognition for our furry, four-legged friends. The day of canine celebration ties in nicely with our product of the month which is our DOG2 – Dog Waste Liners, for the capturing of dog foul. With these two strategies in mind, always one to go the extra mile, Cromwell decided to host our first ever ‘Dog Litter Pick’.
Dog Litter Pick:
Avid blog readers will know that keeping the planet a cleaner, greener place for all is a main goal at Cromwell, this is aided by good waste management, and supported by annual litter picks. As a company, we carry out multiple litter picks throughout the year, whether this is as part of the GB Spring Clean, heading to the coast for the a beach clean, and also supporting our local sponsored football teams by keeping their pitches litter-free. As we neared Summer, we began plans to organise a Summer litter pick within the team, whilst raising awareness of our product of the month – what better than to get our dogs involved with us. This is where the idea of the National Dog Day Litter Pick was formed.
We are a family of animal lovers here at Cromwell, with many of us being proud dog owners, so we were delighted that they could come and join us on our latest local clean up. Alongside the Cromwell team and their pooches, we also invited the local dog rescue to join us as well, Woodhaven – who we have worked alongside previously. The location for the pick was the local park, cricket and rugby pitch – Eversley Park, a hot spot for activity, play, dog walking but also unfortunately litter! With the Summer holidays and the glorious whether we have been enjoying, sadly this area has been left cluttered with litter, from bottles and cans, to sweets and takeaway packets. It is not only unsightly, but harmful to the environment, and the wildlife, including the dogs who explore these areas. So we arrived armed with litter pickers and our litter doggy helpers, ready to have an overhaul clean up!
After a fairly quiet start to the litter pick, we soon began to find waste in several places across the Eversley Park fields, near the children’s area, chucked in trees and shrubbery, left lying on the sports pitches, and most shockingly, some had been left just feet away from the bins. Our team spent an hour of the 27th August, (the day after National Dog Day) picking up and carefully capturing all the discarded litter – even our pooches help collect some of the rubbish which were placed in our litter picking sacks! In total 11 bags of waste was collected from the area, including pieces of a sofa (the unusual find of the pick) – all of these have now been carefully discarded by the council, who were on hand to dispose of the waste.
Dog waste sacks:
There was one ‘litter’ type we notice that we were unable to collect, this was dog waste. Unfortunately we identified a few instances of dog fouling, some even in the children’s and sporting play areas. As proud, and responsible dog owners, this disappointed our team and Woodhaven, but it is sad to say it is a very common problem within public areas such as this. This is why we decided to promote our dog waste liners ‘DOG2’s this month, to try and prevent dog fouling from occurring, by offering a capture solution. Read our dog waste blog to see some creative ideas to help prevent the issue in your areas.
Looking forward
After the 11 bags of litter were collected from the park, the area is now left clean, tidy and litter free, and with plenty of witnesses and thank you’s from the public, we hope this will send a good message and prevent the area from becoming littered again. Next month we will be carrying out our final litter pick of 2024, as we head to Filey beach on the East Coast for our annual beach clean. Keep a look out for an update. If you require any litter picking bags, please get in touch, Cromwell would be happy to supply.
