*With apologies to Tony Hancock’s TV episode The Blood donor (“A pint! That’s very nearly an armful!”)
The latest batch of aluminium cans has been despatched to the Oakham HQ of the charity Helipads for Hospitals.
Charity founder John Nowell visited the home of Novus member Jim Matthews on 28.11.2019 to collect about 6,000 aluminium can. Most of them appear in photos previously posted on this website and our Facebook Page. Nine hundred of them were collected in several litter-picking exercises more than a week ago by members of the South Leicestershire Litter Wombles. That 900 was collected on November 22.
You can see from the group’s Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/groups/604107836721038/ that they collect much more than just cans. They leave the other litter near public litter bins for local councils to take away. But they have been so effective, Blaby District Council has told the group that the council cannot guarantee to take away to bagged roadside rubbish within their 24-hour target.
But over the next five days, the Wombles collected another eight bags of cans. Understandably, there was not time to crush them all, nor to count them.
You can see the eight bags lined up with three one-tonne builders’ bags. One of those full bags contained 2,000 crushed and counted cans. The other two were also full, but because most of those cans were not crushed, they contained only 1,800 cans.
Geoff Walker, the Womble who picked many of the cans, reckons there were about 2,200 cans. So, all in all, the total taken away by John Nowell was about 6,000. As you can see from the photos, his twin-axle trailer was fully laden!
The list of donors is growing incredibly quickly. Many have links with other Rotary clubs across Eastern Central England. The partners with links to Novus Rotary include:
Mel and Mike Jackson-Wevill; David and Margaret Knight; Novus members Channit Riyait, Maya Vansia and others; Sonal and her team at The Pizza Parlour in Leicester; Druck Ltd at Groby; Zeph’s Cafe, in Oadby; Lorne and Cheryl Kind of Kinds of Queniborough Food Service; Waitrose at Market Harborough and Bradgate Rotary Club.
Novus Rotary President Maya Vansia says “We thank all of those people — and others we may have missed — for helping us to help the Helipads for Hospitals charity get off the ground.”
If you want to join this rapidly-growing campaign to turn litter into helipads which might save lives, please go to the top of this page and click on the Contact Us tab to e-mail us.
If you don’t understand the reference to Tony Hancock… or if you just want a reminder of one of the most famous British comedy lines, please click here.
And if you’re unsure of the reference to Wombles, maybe clicking here will help
Last edited at 10:50 on Friday, 29.11.2019
