After the fun we had at Bradford Mela last year (our first visit after living here for 7 years – our bad) we were back again this year but this time we were working.Last year we were impressed by how clean the site was – considering the event gets about 100,000 visitors over the weekend – but we were concerned to see that there were no recycling facilities. So, putting ourselves on the line, Bradford Friends of the Earth offered to litter-pick for the weekend.

Oddly enough most of the group quite enjoyed the litter collecting (and a lot of the crowd were great – helping pick up recyclables, saying they’d been saving cans and bottles for us) and it did give a feeling of great acheivement. We had a set on recycling bins by the tent our stall was in and, on the first day, we were rather dismayed by the amount of non-recyclables put in there. So, for Sunday, we prepared some clearer labelling (remembering that many of the Mela participants didn’t read, or certainly didn’t read English) 

and had one volunteer at a time sat by the bins to keep them pristine. Since it was a lovely day this job was the most popular one – particularly when accompanied by some suntan lotion and an ice-cream.  This seemed to work though as the bins were still looking good and recylable when we left some time after 6pm.

I never thought I’d get so worked up about rubbish but, when you are running around picking up cans, paper and plastic bottles and people walk up and put soiled nappies in your binbag you can see that there is still some work to do…