Graham Stuart, MP for Beverley and Holderness, is due to visit Cherry Burton Primary School on Friday 25th June to celebrate ‘the Great British Spring Clean’, started by the environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy. This nationwide event asks everyone to chip in and do their bit to help eliminate the scourge of litter that blights our vibrant East Yorkshire countryside by encouraging people across the county to go litter-picking.
Graham will join Beverley Rural Councillors, Pauline Greenwood, Kevin Beaumont and Bernard Gateshill on an outdoor litter pick of the school grounds to teach young pupils the importance of maintaining their community and to help raise awareness within schools the possible benefits to young children that litter picking can have.
In particular, Graham would wish to show pupils that young people are able to make a difference to their local area and the world they live in, improve their environmental awareness, and encourage teachers to take on regular clean-ups as a way of boosting children’s mental health and well-being by keeping them active.
The visit will be hosted by Miss Natalie Redpath, who two years previously attended and completed the UK Parliament Teacher Ambassador Programme, designed to bring students closer to decision makers and help teachers deliver an understanding of the role and structure of government.
The Great British Spring Clean, now in its sixth year, aims to bring together individuals, community organisations, businesses and councils to make a difference to the environment on our doorstep. In 2019, over half a million litter-pickers collected just under a million bags of rubbish, weighing around 4,300 tonnes.
This year, Graham praises the completion of Keep Britain Tidy’s ‘million-mile mission’. Over the course of the event, not only did the charity achieve the original one-million-mile coverage target but had been exceeded its original commitment by 160,592.6 miles of litter-picking pledges from charities, schools, and individuals.
Graham commented, “It’s really encouraging to see that so many public-spirited individuals and groups turned out to do their bit for the preservation of their local green spaces. I believe getting outdoors and serving the community in this way more regularly is not only beneficial for our environment, but is also important for the personal mental and physical health of our children.
“I look forward to meeting the pupils of Cherry Burton Primary School and showing them, the future generation of ‘litter heroes’, how we can best appreciate the countryside and town centres that provided the open-air meeting places that we so desperately needed during the pandemic. I’d encourage as many schools as possible to get involved in next year’s Great British Spring Clean, and to look out for the online downloadable resources available at Keep Britain Tidy’s website to help pupils become more litter aware”
