HAD you been in Hale on a Sunday afternoon recently you might have seen a group of 10 volunteers in high visibility jackets clearing litter from the car parks, streets and hidden corners.

In one and a half hours they filled 14 sacks of rubbish which was collected by Amey the following day. This activity has occurred every six weeks since July 2014 (see Our Altrincham.org for details of the next street tidy-up). Public spirited people of all ages and from all backgrounds move beyond grumbling about litter to taking positive action cleaning it up.

An odd fact about house work is that dirt, dust and smears on surfaces can pass unnoticed until you start to clean a little bit. Then suddenly you notice the dirt you’d never seen before! So with litter. It goes unnoticed until suddenly it reaches unacceptable proportions. And all because no-one has cared.

But how to stop the dropping of litter in the first place? A grandmother I know was in a public restaurant with her family. When the toddler grandson started to throw food from his high chair his mother said, “We choose to ignore that kind of behaviour.” The grandmother absorbed that comment but when more missiles came from the high chair she exploded, “NO Nick”. The child was stopped in his tracks! Learning good habits starts early in life!

Much of the litter is food and drink related, cartons from coffee drinks, packaging from take away pizzas and sweet wrappers. There is a reference in the Bible to cleaning up after a meal. Jesus miraculously blesses two small fishes and five barley loaves and uses them to provide sufficient food for the 5000 men, together with women and children, who had come out of the town to hear him teach. We read in all four gospel accounts that the food not eaten was gathered up in twelve baskets so nothing was wasted. A good precedent for tidying up!

Ruth Neal, Churches Together in Hale