Thank you to all our hard working volunteers who took part in our micro cleans and action days in July, some more great work was done to enhance the appearance of our town. Our first action day of the month was on the 4th July which saw us meet down on the Quays to clean the area around the rocks where there were lots of discarded cans, bottles, coffee mugs, sandwich wrappings and more. Please remember if you are enjoying your lunch etc. sitting on the walls on the Quays to dispose of your rubbish properly and not just throw it down in on the rocks (they are not a bin!) it is harmful to the environment and is also very difficult to reach in between the rocks. All our volunteers on the day did tremendous work though to remove a lot of this rubbish.

Our next big action day was on the 18th July where we met at the Nicky Rackard statute and tackled the alley leading from the bottom of Skeffington Street into McCauleys’ car park. We painted, litter picked, removed graffiti and generally improved the area. It was in a bad way and got some great attention from our wonderful volunteers. Thank you to everyone who gave Skeffington Street an amazing facelift, the place looks fantastic.

Well done to all our Wednesday volunteers too who come along every week to take part in micro enhancements in our town centre from litter picks (which include lots of cigarette butts!), painting and small maintenance projects. They are only one hour long and you can meet us at the bullring at 6pm on Wednesdays. We are always delighted when anyone joins us for a cleanup and if you can bring a friend with you even better.

We also handed out lots of cigarette butt storage cases this month to members of the public and local businesses during our activities to encourage people to stop littering their butts. Even if there is no bin nearby these cases can be used to store your butts safely in your pocket until you find one. Cigarette butts are one of our main pieces of litters we find during our clean-ups and cause huge problems for the environment as well as been unsightly. We can easily pick up 1000s of these during each cleanup. In the photo below taken by Denis Collins our chairman who counted 538 cigarette butts that he picked up just in the Bullring one night and there were others picking up equal amounts too. Please help us by stop throwing your butts on the ground if you smoke and instead dispose of them responsibly. We spend a lot of time picking up butts that could be better used on other projects.

A big thanks also to all our residents who continue to keep their own area clean. There have been great projects going on from installing new flower beds, frequent cleanings and painting community areas. Well done to all the residents for their great efforts you are a credit to your community. Please keep up the great work, by everyone keeping you own place clean and being responsible when you are around the town together we can keep Wexford clean and beautiful, more information on the next action Saturday in August will follow shortly.

Over the next few weeks we need to keep our town as clean and tidy as possible in advance of the Tidy Towns Judges Adjudication. Join our volunteers who are out three times a week Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday taking actions to improve our town. Wednesdays we meet in the Bullring and Thursdays by the Nicky Rackard statue in Selskar for one hour. All equipment is supplied. Our big Action Event every week is on Saturday at 10am for about one and a half hours. Just send us a message or check out Facebook, Twitter or the website here and we will let you know when and where we will be meeting next. If you could join us for one of these meetups it would really help us tidy and improve the town.

Recently we joined forces with the Inland Waterways on Saturday 16th May and had a lovely morning cleanup on Kaat Strand. Our volunteers were all litter-picking as there was a large amount of rubbish washed up, mostly plastic bottles and plastic bags, there was also a lot of dumping. On Saturday 23rd we met at the tourist office on the Quay to paint and clean on the Crescent Quay. We met there again on Saturday 30th to finish off the painting. We also had a group out at Woodies roundabout picking up litter on the 30th. We will be moving on to paint Fettit’s Lane now during our evening cleanups. Next Saturday June 6th we will be painting the old cinema across from Dunnes, we need anyone who is willing to paint for an hour or two, if you can help please message me as I need to know how many brushes etc we need.

Thank you to all the volunteers who joined us at our Action Days. We also want to say a big thank you to Michael Hayes and his staff at O’ Briens Sandwich bar on Main Street, who looks after the Tidy Towns volunteers, every week we are on the town we really enjoy the tea/coffee and chat afterwards.