A Liverpool voluntary group, the Anfield Alley Angels, has helped increase the recycling rate in Anfield, Liverpool by nearly 80% in six months.
The project is run by Liverpool City Council and housing association Your Housing Group, who have more than 1000 properties in the area, and encourages local residents to work voluntarily to clean-up their area on a weekly basis.
The group celebrated their achievements with a special clean-up day on Friday January 25 which included litter picking, brushing the alleyways, weeding, bin store tidy-ups, and information stands with information about different recycling schemes. Free dog waste bags were also offered to dog walkers.
So far 50 local residents have been involved with the Alley Angels project, including a regular clean-up team of seven people, with more than 250 hours of their collective time donated since the project started seven months ago.
Dave Litherland, head of Anfield Regeneration for Your Housing Group said: ‘This initiative is making a huge difference to the Anfield Village area with residents taking far more pride in their neighbourhood than they did previously. Before Alley Angels started, recycling rates on Randolph Street were only 6% and now they are at 82%.
‘The current recycling rate for the city of Liverpool is 29% so this is tremendous. Last year Liverpool City Council spent £10m on fly tipping, so this project is helping make a big saving.’
Research conducted by mattress recycling firm The Furniture Recycling Group found that Liverpool was the worst offender for fly-tipping incidents per person across the country, with 74,909 total incidents reported during 2018.
A Liverpool City Council spokesperson told Environment Journal the way the city collates data on fly-tipping differs from rest of UK.
‘For instance, we include plastic bags where most don’t,’ they said.
‘As an authority, we were also the first to secure a prison conviction for a serial fly-tipper – and pursue prosecutions vigorously.’