Litter picking around the UK
The igus® big spring clean!
We’ve started the igus litter pick! Green company incentives are so important for everyone and every company that has these incentives is working hard to ensure they are being fulfilled. Ensuring that we are aware of our carbon footprint and lowering the impact we have on the planet where we can, is vital.
Around Northamptonshire there are a variety of organisations that are getting communities to come together to help tackle the ever growing sea of discarded litter. During the pandemic, the number of face masks that have been cast away on the side of the road is disgusting and as a nation we should be ashamed of ourselves. So, using that anger that we all feel when we see this rubbish, we decided as a company to try and do something about it.
We have many green incentives at igus® such as the chainge programme (read more here: https://blog.igus.co.uk/recycle-plastic-energy-chain/) where we are starting to make a contribution towards the reduction of plastic waste and the improvement of recycling in industry. But to be honest, it simply isn’t going far enough. As individuals we all need to be doing more and as a collective, we can do more!
As a company, there are even more things that igus® is doing with green incentives, reducing water waste, reducing offcut waste and recycling into further polymer parts. However, individually some of us wanted to see the impact we could make, so we embarked on a little project.
The most recent event that we have taken part in is the igus® big spring clean. As a company, we wanted to do something to help clean up our surroundings, so we enlisted the help of some of our engineers up and down the UK and we organised various litter picking expeditions around their local areas.
We collaborated with the Brackmills BID “give back” scheme, which is dedicated to cleaning up Brackmills, in anyway it can, with the help of all the local businesses.
The litter pick across the UK.
A few Saturdays ago, small groups met up at the UK headquarters on Brackmills Industrial Estate in Northampton to do the litter picks in a COVID secure manner. We collected over 10 bags of rubbish in a 2-hour stint, all in close proximity to the office. It was heart-breaking to see the amount of rubbish that had been discarded in hedges, thrown in bushes and some simply abandoned on the side of the road.
As you can see, we even managed to rope some of the youth in!
Dan Mole, the dry-tech engineer for the North East took his son out litter picking, one of our younger volunteers at the tender age of 3!
I also took my son out around the countryside in Northampton to help out with the spring clean. At nearly 12 years old, I was anticipating some reluctance, however, I was pleasantly surprised that he thought it was a great idea!! Ensuring that the younger generation is aware and engaged with the situation around climate change is the key to ensuring the future of the planet remains just that, the future.
As a company, we will continue to do ‘spring’ clean regularly, up and down the country, in a bid to help towards a better and cleaner future for our younger generation.
Recycling has always been an important topic at igus® as we are aware plastic is a much-discussed material within the sustainability conversation. We know that high-performance plastics can make a contribution to the protection of resources and the environment and we have made this a focus with our long service life products. Read more about sustainability at igus here.
