As part of the New Forest District Council’s New Forest Spring Clean initiative – a month long series of volunteer led community cleaning events through March and April – St Mark’s were proud to host this event for our village of Pennington. With a preceding week of grey skies, scattered showers and rain, it was to great relief that the skies remained dry – and on occasion, blue and sunny!
Moving out into the highways and byways of Pennington, the eager volunteers – clad in high-vis vests – went armed with refuse bags and litter grabbers, in a hunt for waste discarded in verges and hedgerows. Over the course of two hours many glass bottles, cans, discarded plastic wrappers and more were collected up and returned to St Mark’s: for a more fitting disposal.
Anne Elliott, associate priest of St Mark’s remarked “We had a good number of Pennington folk gathering to spend the morning litter-picking to make our village a cleaner and safer place for everyone. We were well supported with equipment by NFDC and refreshments by our church team. Around twenty pickers gathered near thirty sacks of rubbish.”
Jack Davies, the Liberal Democrat councillor for Lymington and Pennington joined the cause and reflected how “we’ve helped to make Pennington a better place. It was an honour to take part in the community clean up: I’m really grateful to everybody at St. Mark’s for making today a success. St. Mark’s has a reputation for driving positive action to improve our community and it is easy to see why.”
