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INTERVIEW: NEIL MCIVOR FROM PRIDE OF STAMFORD AND TEAM STAMFORD

Blind corners: the litter pickers’ nemesis

Neil McIvor set up Pride of Stamford litter pickers over six years ago and it’s safe to say that in that time he’s learnt a thing or two about what makes Brits toss their rubbish. With much of the litter comprising single use plastic – water bottles, coffee cups, sandwich packs – Plastic Free Stamford caught up with him to find out more.

“Blind corners are the worst. You find the most litter on the blind corners because [drivers] know that no one can see them in either direction. They wind down their window, they’re looking in their mirror and they know no one can see them…..Boom! Out it goes.”

Neil also highlights disused and unloved areas of town – those little corners that are overgrown that we all just turn a blind eye to. They too become litter hotspots.

“Ivy for example attracts litter,” he explains. “Where do people leave their litter? They shove it in the ivy or the overgrown bushes where they think no one can see it.” And this is why Neil has his sites on clearing up these unloved spaces with his latest initiative, Team Stamford.

“Behind that grot spot is something beautiful”

Using his skills and materials from his day job along with a crack team of volunteers, Team Stamford go to the disused parts of town and derelict buildings, grot spots as Neil calls them, to tidy them up.

Most recently they cleared the verges up on North Street and planted swathes of wildflower seeds – excitingly, the shoots are just starting to show. While another project saw them clear the bank of the Welland at the cattle market car park, opposite the meadows – the photo above is the view from the bench. For over 20 years it has been left unattended and unloved. Now, with some hard graft, the team has opened up the space so that you can see the beautiful trees. They’ve also installed a hand made cherry wood bench encouraging people to sit for a moment and appreciate one of the best views of Stamford.

By clearing overgrown patches of scrub land, Team Stamford are creating new local beauty spots and if something looks pretty, people are less likely to treat it badly. They respect it more.

“The aim is to clear up grot spots. You may not see them, you may just walk past but behind that grot spot is something beautiful, something fantastic, amazing. And if you clean it up, make it look nice, people are less likely to leave their rubbish there.”

“People who didn’t litter before, will now litter”

But he believes that the pandemic has made his job far harder as it has lead to a huge rise in the number of people willing to litter.

“What we have found is that living with these more stringent rules, people who didn’t litter before, do now litter. It starts with fly tipping. People who didn’t used to fly tip will now fly tip – they wouldn’t break the rules in normal times but with all the new restrictions people have started to care less about playing by the rules and just toss things anywhere.”

That, coupled with the fact that recycling centres were harder to access, meant people were increasingly heading out to the country lanes to get rid of their rubbish. 

“And this then quickly turns to day to day littering,” explains Neil. “That plastic crisp packet – where before they might have put it in the bin, now it just goes on the floor. It’s a slippery slope.”

“People should have pride in Stamford”

But Neil does at least have rave reviews for our local council, SKDC. “If I find a fly tip, I can take a photo and send it to them, within just a few hours it’s gone. We have a really good relationship with them. Many other litter picking groups elsewhere around the country don’t have this, so we’re lucky.”

“People should have pride in Stamford. All little towns should have pride in their own areas. Everyone should have pride in their own surroundings and everyone should be responsible for their own surroundings. I want to keep the town looking beautiful, keep the punters rolling in and keep everyone happy,” Neil explains. “I love the history. I love the ambience. I love the flowers. I’ve billed myself as the Stamford caretaker. No one does the job. No one mediates between all the agencies. SKDC, town council, Stamford in bloom, Shop Stamford. I could do it.” Surely, this is a no brainer. Neil gets my vote every time.

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Q&A: ALL GOOD MARKET REFILL SHOP, STAMFORD

All Good Market

Helping Stamford stock up on staples plastic free

This week PFS took some time out to catch up with local Plastic Free Champion, Annabel Britton from ALL GOOD Market on St Paul’s Street – a lovely refill shop that also sells a wide range of local produce. ALL GOOD gives you the opportunity to stock up on a wide range of staples – pasta, rice, flour, herbs and spices, dried fruit, even washing up liquid and shower gel, while massively reducing the need for single use packaging.

Starting a new venture during a global pandemic is no mean feat, but with such a clear focus on reducing single use plastic, we couldn’t help but want to find out more….

Plastic Free Stamford: Can you tell us a little bit about why you started your refill business and what motivated you to focus on helping others reduce their single use packaging?

Annabel Britton: After graduating uni, I lived in Paris and used a zero waste shop there, which was brilliant. I came home for lockdown and started to notice how much more packaging waste we produced as a family, compared to how I had been living. However, there wasn’t a shop local to us where we could buy refills. I felt this was a glaring gap in the market in Stamford and a quick survey posted on Facebook confirmed my suspicions.*

PFS: So what can people expect from a trip to ALL GOOD and how does it all work?

AB: I look to offer a really personalised service and an enjoyable shopping experience – this is not like going to the supermarket! Usually until a customer is a regular, I serve them or help them and tend to ‘walk people through it’ to begin with. I’m there to help, so there’s no need to worry about what not having shopped in a refill shop before.

PFS: And what should people bring?

AB: Any bags or containers they can remember. They don’t need to be pretty Kilner jars – you can bring old bread bags, egg boxes, takeaway containers, gin bottles… the best thing I’ve refilled so far was the plastic packaging of an Easter egg. I do also have paper bags and sterilised containers which people are welcome to take for free.

PFS: What packaging do your products come in and what happens to it?

AB: Good question! I will answer with full transparency. It pretty much falls into three camps.

For eggs, coffee, oils, cleaning products, milk, tea and kimchi, any packaging is returned to the supplier to be reused, so it’s a completely closed-loop system.

For dried products (rice, oats, flour, etc.) I am saving the sacks and have grand plans to upcycle them. Don’t want to give the game away!

Spices, nuts, dried fruit and some seeds come in plastic packaging which isn’t recyclable. This is regrettable but mostly necessary to preserve the quality. However, I think that one 5kg bag of cashew nuts is preferable to 20 250g bags.

PFS: What do you see as the biggest barriers to people using a refill shop and how can you help them overcome this?

AB: From my customers, I perceive the biggest barrier being a lack of time. A lot of people have so much on their plate – this year more than ever – and remembering to bring containers, or go to more than one shop to buy food, is a bit too much to ask sometimes. This is part of the reason I offer delivery, I really want to reach as many people as possible. 

PFS: Tell us a bit about your mission to champion local producers and why this is so important.

AB: It dawned on me that we live in a part of the country which is almost defined by agriculture. Perhaps this is particularly immediate to me because it is my Dad’s career. But I just thought it’s completely doolally that a farmer could produce eggs or potatoes or milk locally, and sell them to Tesco, and they end up being sold in Carlisle. And then a farmer in Cumbria producing the same thing might sell their’s to Waitrose and they end up in the Stamford branch. It’s just nonsensical.

PFS: What has been the best thing about setting up on your own?

AB: The best thing is having complete control! The shop is such a creative outlet and if I want to post something on Instagram, sell a gingerbread kit or launch a delivery service, I don’t have to consult anyone. I can put my ideas into action as quickly as I want.

PFS: And finally, what’s next for ALL GOOD? Any exciting plans and ideas up your sleeve?

AB: Since Christmas I’ve launched a lot of new products, a delivery service and takeaway filter coffee with locally produced Two Chimps coffee, but my focus now is on trying to improve the existing website and doing lots of marketing as ever.

*Stamford is incredibly lucky in that it now has three refill options – joining ALL GOOD, Refill Revolution offers a local refill delivery only service and the Eco Shop at Great Casterton has also recently opened. Each has their own distinct selection of products and unique selling points – they are all of course Plastic Free Champions.

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INTERVIEW: NEIL MCIVOR FROM PRIDE OF STAMFORD

Humans can’t use bins

“Humans can’t use bins. You can have a million bins and they will still put rubbish next to the bin or just leave it. You can train a monkey to use a bin. You can train a bird to use a bin. But you can’t train humans to use a bin. The annoyance, the laziness, the fact that someone else will do it. And the fact that they just do not care,” so laments local legend and Stamford super fan, Neil McIvor at our recent catch up.

Neil is the founder of Pride of Stamford litter pickers. Instantly recognisable in his bright orange ex-RAC van, he and his team of volunteer litter pickers work tirelessly with local council workers to keep our town rubbish free.

“Half a century in the great outdoors has done nothing to degrade this piece of plastic”

He arrives for our chat in his trademark orange hoody, brandishing a favourite find in his hand – his trophy he calls it. It’s a plastic bottle he has had dated back to the late 60s. Dug up on one of his many litter picks, it looks good as new, bar a bit of mud. Half a century in the great outdoors has done nothing to degrade this piece of plastic – a powerful and depressing reminder of the longevity of single use plastic.

So if bins aren’t the answer to our litter problems, what is? Well, when it comes to plastic bottles, he has a plan. “We need a proper recycling scheme,” he explains. “We need to give 20p on every bottle to make it worthwhile for people to take it back. People would walk the streets taking them back too. Every plastic bottle. 20 pence. Not 5p. Not 10p. Not 7.5p. 20p.” It seems simple enough – they do it across Europe after all, but for some reason the UK government is loathed to do it. For now at least, in our local area we have to rely on the Pride of Stamford team. And with lockdown restrictions being lifted today, we’ll need them now more than ever, if Neil’s experience is anything to go by.

“There’s going to be a Tsunami of litter”

“When lockdown finishes, there’s going to be a tsunami of litter. It’s going to be insane,” Neil says. “We’ve got a perfect storm coming. With pubs not being open, beer gardens are open and you’ve got limited capacity with people still wanting to go out and drink. Last time, you had adults, children and teenagers all milling around on the meadows. The older ones had their plastic cups from the pub that they would just toss away – they’d had a few drinks and didn’t care. The kids would see the older generations leaving their rubbish and they would do the same. They would all just get up and walk away, make no effort to clean up.”

“People have been locked up. I understand that. They are going to want to let their hair down. I understand that completely. But it can be done responsibly. Put your rubbish in the bag you bought your stuff in. Put it in the bin. And if the bin is full, just tie the handle up and leave it by the bin, recycling your bag for your rubbish.”

This certainly seems like something we could all do when we’re next out for that oh so precious socially distanced drink with friends. And to put quantities into context, there have been days when, for example Neil, his team and council workers have collected 80 – 90 bags of rubbish from the meadows, rec and skate park alone. Yes, 90 bags of rubbish left on a single day. We can do better.

There’s no doubt that lockdown has brought its own challenges when it comes to single use plastic. Obviously the use of throw away masks and gloves have sky rocketed but it’s take away coffee cups that get the most air time from Neil.

“The litter pickers at Burghley have seen coffee cups go through the roof”

“Coffee cups – I’m afraid with the coffee shops shut, you’ve got the wanderers, the jugglers who go off to Burghley and the litter pickers at Burghley have seen coffee cups go through the roof. It’s insane. The plastic cap just never degrades and the cup just turns into a plastic mush that never degrades,” Neil explains.

But the problems don’t stop there. These coffee cups fill our bins to overflowing, taking up precious bin space and giving people yet another excuse to simply toss unwanted plastic on the floor. Crushing the cup and taking the caps off any empty plastic bottles you have before you put them in the bin is a simple way we can all help make a contribution to keeping our town clean.

Neil does then concede that it is not all doom and gloom. Thank goodness. With lockdown restrictions people have been getting out and walking more and as a result are seeing the litter problem first hand. Neil has been inundated with messages from people wanting to get involved, wanting to help make a difference, which is a huge step in the right direction.

One surprising benefit of lockdown has been the number of youngsters getting involved as part of the Duke of Edinburgh scheme. With few other community-based projects available, many D of E-ers have turned to Neil and have enjoyed it so much, they’ve got their friends to join too. Neil also runs Mini Ninjas, taking youngsters to the rec to litter pick – he bills it a treasure hunt and they have a brilliant time. A new generation of Pride of Stamford litter pickers are taking up the reigns – long may it continue.

If you’d like to get involved with Pride of Stamford, they organise litter picks on the last Sunday of every month. Check out their Facebook page for more details.

Next time we’ll hear more from Neil about local litter hotspots and his latest venture to combat problem areas, Team Stamford.