Capital Clean-up Campaign

Aims:

The aim of the Capital Clean-up Campaign is to make London a cleaner and greener city in time for the 2012 spotlight through local volunteering and community action. The campaign helps the pubic find volunteer opportunities near them or organise and find volunteers for their own clean-ups.

Inspiration:

London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games

Outcomes so far:

Over the past two years, more than: 400 Capital Clean-up events took place over 32 London boroughs; 2,000 black bags of litter were collected; 1,500m2 of graffiti was removed; 800m2 of habitat was restored; 5,000 volunteers took part

Unexpected outcomes:

The objectives of the campaign have led to some interesting events being organised, such as training responsible dog owners and raising the profile of litter and 'grime-crime' enforcement. It has also provided an opportunity to organise Community Payback projects.

Obstacles, and how we overcame them:

Over previous years, many of the Capital Clean-up events have been organised by boroughs, schools and businesses, as well as great organisations like Thames21.

This year, however, we wanted to do more to empower London's great network of active, engaged communities to improve their local spaces. You know better than anyone where a bit of TLC will make the greatest impact. So this year we launched a new website so that community groups can promote their events and get extra support. We have partnered with the Big Tidy Up to offer free clean-up kit as well as CleanupUK, a charity specialising in helping the public tackle the problem of litter, to give you the best support we can.

Please contact us if you want help getting people out to improve a local space by emailing nicola.murphy@london.gov.uk or visiting www.london.gov.uk/capitalclean-up

Lessons learned:

Planning a campaign takes a long time and we have many interested stakeholders. In future years, we would like to start engaging with these other groups sooner and identify more opportunities to work together.

Links and partnerships:

Keep Britain Tidy and its Big Tidy Up Campaign (from their website) http://www.thebigtidyup.org/ Keep Britain Tidy is a national environmental charity campaigning directly to the public about those things that impact negatively on the places where we live, work, invest and visit to change behaviour for the better and improve our local environment. Keep Britain Tidy’s Big Tidy Up campaign is set to get the entire country cleaning up so order your free clean-up kit now and get tidying!

Further information:

The Capital Clean-up Campaign is supported by the Mayor of London and his Team London initiative in partnership with Thames 21, the Big Tidy Up and CleanupUK. This is the fifth year of the campaign and our first burst of activity is from 10 June to 24 July.

We coordinate borough, community and private sector organised clean-ups. Clean-up activity tends to be focused on litter, graffiti, vegetation and dumped rubbish clearance. To empower communities to improve their local spaces, we can put you in contact with the appropriate person in your borough if you need help clearing vegetation or rubbish and also promote your event on our website so the public and businesses can come along and help out. We can even co-register your community event with Keep Britain Tidy's 'Big Tidy Up' so you can get your hands on some free clean-up kit.

To promote your group or organisation's events, recruit volunteers and be part of preparing London for 2012, visit and register on our website www.london.gov.uk/capitalclean-up or email capitalclean-up@london.gov.uk