McDonald’s franchisee Ross Drake and crew from the McDonald’s restaurant in Newbury joined forces with Newbury Cubs from the 2nd Newbury Scout group to tackle litter in Northbrook Park.
Armed with litter pickers, the 35-strong team of volunteers and staff collected over 10 bags of rubbish as they looked to encourage the local community to take responsibility for keeping the community litter-free and to take pride in the local environment. The rubbish was split between landfill and recycling to help ensure that it was disposed of properly.
Ross Drake, McDonald’s franchisee, said: “It was great to team up with the local Scout group to tackle litter in Northbrook Park because it shows what can be achieved when the local community work together. It’s everyone’s responsibility to keep our communities clean and we hope that large scale litter-picking events like this can help to generate awareness of the issue, as well as encourage more responsibility when disposing of litter. It’s vital that we all do our bit – everyone from local businesses like mine, to the local residents of Newbury should make a commitment to help protect the local environment.”
Hundreds of McDonald’s clean-up events are taking place across the country in 2015 as part of Keep Britain Tidy’s anti-littering campaign, ‘Love Where You Live’. The campaign encourages the public to take action and help reduce the amount of litter in their local area and across England by 2020.
Aside from organising regular litter events, staff at every restaurant patrol the local area and clean up regularly throughout the day to collect all litter that has been discarded, regardless of its origin. McDonald’s was the first restaurant to introduce ‘Litter Patrols’ in the UK.
