As a canoe club, the health of our local waterways is of key importance to us and we will be looking to improve these by going out and removing the litter that lines the rivers and canals around Nottingham. Last year we ran multiple litter picks on the River Trent and collected 50+ bags of rubbish overall. A large majority of these events were supported by rafts, enabling us to allow non-paddlers from the local area to take part, with around 15 people attending each event.
The money from the grant will be spent on new equipment (rafts, SUPs, refuse sacks, etc.) to help facilitate future litter picks, as well as building up some of the club’s newer disciplines of raft racing and stand up paddleboarding. These disciplines are growing in popularity across the club and are fantastic ways to collect litter from the river and hopefully enable new paddlers to get out on the water with us and start their journey into paddle sports.
We intend to run at least one litter picking event every month (weather depending). Due to the current government guidelines in place around Covid-19, these events are unlikely to start for a few months.
This really is a fantastic opportunity for members to get involved with cleaning up our local waterways, as well as bringing new members into the club. Our rivers are our play areas and it is a real shame to see the amount of litter that builds up which is why we wanted to create some specific litter picking events with the aim of removing the majority of litter from our waters.