This weekend, I headed out bright and early to do something a bit different.
If you follow me on social media, you may have noticed me posting about a McDonald's Love Where You Live event over the last few weeks as I asked for my local followers to vote on which area of our town was most in need of a tidy up.
Well this Saturday was the day of the event itself and so I headed out bright and early to meet with the local McDonald's team and get to work!
As a parent, teaching my children about the importance of picking up our litter and of proper recycling of rubbish is high on my list of priorities. From the age of 2 my son has been on the ball with it, often pointing out in his loudest possible voice when he sees a member of the public drop their litter on the streets - and whilst this can of course be a little embarrassing, I'm pleased to know that the message has sunk in!
As well as costing the UK taxpayer an estimated £1 BILLION per year (Source: Forgerecycling.co.uk), litter is also known to have a negative effect on many other aspects of life including mental health, crime rates, vermin, wildlife welfare and has even been known to cause road traffic accidents.
McDonald's take the litter problem in the UK seriously. As a founding partner of Keep Britain Tidy's Love Where You Live campaign they have helped to organize more than 2,600 community clean up events since 2011 with over 80,000 volunteers involved.
The event I attended this weekend was just one of a number of UK-wide events taking place this weekend, and I was excited to get involved.
As a home educating parent it's particularly important to me to demonstrate to my children the importance of community spirit and getting hands on to help out in our local area, too.
Unfortunately, the weather on the day wasn't really on our side which seemed to keep a lot of people with children away which is of course understandable, but those of us there were determined to collect as much rubbish as possible so we made our way to Primley Park to get started, litter pickers and trash bags in hand.
The McDonald's staff there on the day were really fired up for the event, and were only too happy to chat to me about the work McDonald's does to keep the local area as litter free as possible.
Elaine, a member of staff at McDonald's, told me that part of her daily role is to go out on litter patrols around the area. She said "I go out 3 times a day to pick up any rubbish in the local area, not just McDonald's litter but anything that's been dropped as we want to do our part to contribute to the cleanliness of the local area. McDonald's also put in two new bins in the nearby car park earlier this year to help keep the area tidier, too".
In fact McDonald's staff across the UK cover a total of 3,000 per week on litter patrols, this adds up to 150,000 miles per year - a distance of 5 marathons per store!
Another member of staff told me that she feels McDonald's have made even more effort to be kind to the environment this year with the introduction of paper straws to replace plastic ones promised before the end of 2019.
And although it's great that they've ramped up their efforts, it has to be said that this isn't just a case of jumping on a trend as McDonald's have actually been powering their delivery trucks using recycled biodiesel from cooking oil for the last 10 years.
So back to the event - how did we get on after spending 2 hours cleaning the local area?
We managed to collect 8 HUGE bags full of litter!
It felt really good to get out there and do something to help improve the local living conditions, and I take my hat off to McDonald's for their efforts to do their bit not only for the local community but to listen to feedback from consumers and make their business as eco-friendly as possible.
To find out more about the work McDonald's does and how you can get involved in future events, please visit www.mcdonalds.co.uk
*This post is part of a paid project with McDonald’s UK and BritMums, promoting McDonald’s Love Where You Live campaign encouraging local communities to take action and work together to tackle litter in their area
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