Birch neighbourhood benefits from clean and green day

The Birch area volunteers at the clean and green day

The Birch neighbourhood is looking much cleaner and attractive after a vigorous day of action by local RBH members and volunteers, RBH employees and Rochdale Council’s Environmental Team.

The Birch Community Group galvanised local people into coming together to give the area a quick pre-spring clean that involved enthusiastic grime busters aged from six to 70.

RBH Communities Partnership Worker Davina Unsworth said: “We have been all over the neighbourhood today with teams involved in litter picking, sorting out messy flower beds, removing waste goods from gardens and generally giving the area a really good tidy up.”

The Council environmental team gave the local playground a thorough sweeping to remove broken glass, stones and other harmful objects.

Planned to fall in the school holidays, the clean up encouraged kids to get involved in sprucing up their neighbourhood and developing a deeper pride in their local area. A mini-army of youngsters enjoyed using ‘robot arm’ litter picking sticks to grab discarded cans, paper and plastic bottles. By mid-morning they had filled over four large bin bags with litter.

The Birch Community Group, local residents and RBH are very pleased with the results and intend further days of action to tackle other jobs in the neighbourhood.

One project is to sort out the shrub beds by redesigning or replanting the beds. This will stop small plants catching the rubbish and making the area look untidy. By changing the placing or type of plants the neighbourhood will look much cleaner overall.

As the clean green blitzing machine put away their brushes, gloves and litter sticks they felt a real sense of accomplishment in doing their part to make their neighbourhood a better place for everyone.