It's back! The Countryside Alliance's Countryside Clean-up returns next month

The Countryside Alliance’s annual Countryside Clean-up initiative which sees thousands of people fighting back against the rubbish blighting our countryside, will take place between Saturday 16 March and Monday 1 April. You can register your clean-up group online now.

Those living in rural areas are being encouraged to engage with this initiative again this year which will see members of the hunting community – along with their friends, families and neighbours – making a positive impact in their local areas by clearing discarded litter from verges, ditches and hedgerows.

The Alliance encourages everyone who can to devote a couple of hours helping to make a difference in a rural area by organising or joining a local clean-up operation taking place around their hunt kennels or other areas where litter could cause problems for wildlife and livestock as well as being an eye-sore.

The Countryside Alliance has had a longstanding campaign against the blight of fly-tipping and littering, especially in rural areas and it is one of our key campaigns this year. Our rural crime survey, published last month, saw fly-tipping and littering remain respondents’ second-highest rural crime priority for police to tackle, behind only agricultural machinery theft. It found that among those who reported a crime having been committed against them, 37% had suffered from this scourge on our landscape.

As part of our wider campaign, we are also raising the issue of littering in Westminster and are encouraging MPs to debate the problem and back our campaign to discourage littering associated with drive-thru businesses such as McDonald’s and Starbucks that are a particular problem on many rural roads. It has never been more important to get involved on the ground and support our Countryside Clean-up where your action can support our work in Westminster and make a real difference in the countryside.

We hope you will support the Countryside Clean-up campaign this year and help keep our countryside litter-free and safe for wildlife and livestock. If you would like to join the campaign, please register your group now.