Our parish is pristine. Yours could be too.

Our pilot parish, Little Rissington, home to 280 people, is situated in the heart of the Cotswolds. In the 1960s, children played football and tin can copper on and around the main road - pausing perhaps five or six times an hour to allow a car through. Today, it’s a busy thoroughfare and parents keep their children well away from the road. Where traffic goes, litter follows and Little Rissington is no exception. About two black wheelie bins worth of litter finds its way onto the parish roads and verges every month. Imagine spreading 12 black wheelie bins of rubbish around a small parish - that was the state of our roads prior to each six-monthly pick.

To put it another way, over 600 pieces of litter are picked up every week, of which around 250 are cigarette butts. That’s 12,000 cigarette butts per year.

This is incompatible with a thriving local ecosystem, not to mention the damage filters can do when washed into the waterways and thence into the sea.

In January 2019, Little Rissington decided to call time on this litter and create a #pristineparish.

The people of the parish found out early in the process that they would have to achieve their goal without the help of the district council, bar the donation of some litter-picking equipment. Councils are geared to cleaning accumulations of litter, not picking up litter on sight as is now done. Little Rissington eventually adopted the Eden Program devised by a resident who has led many culture-change projects. Since mid-February 2019, the entire parish road network has been litter-picked never less than once a week, and usually twice a week.

The parish now looks pristine and this has encouraged parishioners to keep it that way by carrying a bag in their pocket and picking up litter when they see it, while visiting neighbours, walking the dog, going to church, or just going for a stroll.

If you would like your parish to adopt the Eden Program, let us know below. We make no charge for helping parishes. We pay our way through charging for branding on the hi-vis vests that we provide to you for free.

We know that parishes do not have the resources to invest in major quality of life improvements within their parish. So, half the branding fee goes to your parish for infrastructure projects.

For the nitty gritty go here.