Staff from six McDonald’s restaurants in Bristol joined forces with local residents to tackle littering in the Abbey Wood area of Filton.
Armed with litter pickers, the team of 27 volunteers and staff collected over 20 bags of rubbish as they looked to encourage the local community to take responsibility for keeping the community litter-free and to take pride in the local environment.
They collected litter on the cycle path leading from the McDonald’s restaurant at Abbey Wood Shopping Park to Filton Abbey Wood railway station – a route known to be problematic due to the lack of public bins available.
Mike Guerin, the local McDonald’s franchisee, said:
“I’d like to thank everyone involved on the day for their hard work and for helping to set an example of what can be achieved when people pull together.”
“It’s everyone’s responsibility to keep our communities clean and we hope that regular litter-picking activities like this can help to generate awareness of the issue, as well as encourage more responsibility when disposing of litter.”
“It’s vital that we all do our bit to tackle the issue – everyone from local businesses like mine, to the local residents of Bristol should make a commitment to help protect the local environment.”
Hundreds of McDonald’s clean-up events are taking place across the country in 2015 as part of Keep Britain Tidy’s anti-littering campaign, ‘Love Where You Live’. The campaign encourages the public to take action and help reduce the amount of litter in their local area and across England by 2020.
Aside from organising regular litter events, staff at every restaurant patrol the local area and clean up regularly throughout the day to collect all litter that has been discarded, regardless of its origin. McDonald’s was the first restaurant to introduce ‘Litter Patrols’ in the UK.
