'Bag The Bruck' KGS 'Roots & Shoots'

This month our Roots & Shoots group decided that cleaning up our community shores would be a great idea! Our group leaders Alice and Tansy had already organised lots of black bags and some rather large and unfashionable wax gloves for us so all we needed to was brace the wind and head for the rocks to pick up the rubbish!On Saturday the 3rd of November , we worked as two teams; one morning team and one afternoon team to clear the Mills shoreline of rubbish (or “bruck” in Orcadian) and the black bags soon added up! Working as a big group was fun and Tansy and Alice were very encouraging of the whole team.We were collecting everything from old crisp packets to old carpets and our most frequent objects -fizzy drink cans and Styrofoam burger cases. The shore was next to one of the main roads so we suspect most of the smaller items such as sweet wrappers and cans have come from the cars, but what some people don’t know is how much this harms the environment! Drinks cans take 200-500 years to decompose and Styrofoam never decomposes so this will be on our beaches forever unless we do something about it!By the end of the three hours we’d spend cleaning and gathering we were all very tired but the sense of achievement was fantastic! It was amazing to know we had volunteered to spend our time to actively help make a difference and our hard work was well paid off because it really made a massive difference to the shore line. Even the smallest of tasks make a BIG difference!(Since doing the clean-up, we are planning to get bins along this shore to help keep it clean and safe for our community)Zoe Seatter (member of the KGS 'Roots & Shoots group')