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Chocolate wrappers, tins, bottles, blankets, plastic bags, jumpers, cardboard boxes, cigarette butts, vapes, plastics of all kinds and much more were all in a days work for pupils from Rathore School and St Malachy's Primary School who were taking part in 'The Big Spring Clean' around Carnagat yesterday, 2 April, helping make their area free from litter dropped by other people.
The big question on every child's lips was "Why are people littering" something that they find so hard to understand.
St Malachy's Teacher, Leverne Murphy explained: "The Big Spring Clean is an annual event, and it's in partnership with the Eco Schools International Programme. In previous years, we've teamed up with McDonald's, Translink, and we wanted to team up with another school this year.
"Because Rathore is so close in proximity to our own school St Malachy's, we felt we should extend the hand of education, and friendship and just take part, two schools coming together to clean up our local area. Our school is in this community, in this local area, and it means an awful lot to us for it to be litter free."
The children were having a ball being out and about on what was a beautiful sunny day. Murphy added "they're not only having a ball, they're also understanding that littering is wrong. They're saying, why are people littering. why are they dropping this litter? They don't understand it because they have been shown that littering is a problem and that littering is wrong. But you know what, they're doing their absolute best today. They're working as a team. They're coming together with another school. They look fantastic in their high vis. They've got their bags, their litter pickers, and they are looking for every single piece of litter that has been dropped by somebody else, and they're taken care of their community."
Talking about the idea behind the litter pick Rathore Teacher Denise Murray said "It's to raise awareness on the issue of litter through the community and through Newry, especially for children, and the impact that it can have on the community. It's not nice to look at and obviously for the animals around this area it can be quite dangerous as well. I think it's important that we work together, and we're collaborating with another primary school for the children to see the impact on it and it was really to showcase us being out here, being in the public, and to continue doing this"
"They're really enjoying it. We would complete litter picks every term within the school grounds, we work our way around the school zones. Children are very used to doing this. They've actually done a beach cleanup as well on Warrenpoint Beach as well, so this is going to continue on. We're going to go down to Warrenpoint Beach and do another litter pick there."
Murphy concluded "The staff and children from St Malachy’s would like to thank everyone from Rathore for their time, effort and participation on the day."
