Please click on the photo to hear her thank the donors
Yet more cans are on the way to Stocken Prison in Rutland where they will be melted down ready to be turned into a life-saving helipad.
Currently, neither of the major Accident and Emergency departments in the East Midlands at Queens Medical Centre, Nottingham and Leicester Royal Infirmary have onsite helipads to allow air ambulances to deliver critically-ill patients in the shortest possible time.
Former RAF helicopter pilot and later Air Ambulance pilot John Nowell set up the charity Helipads for Hospitals in 2016. Already about a quarter of a million aluminium cans have been donated. About a million are needed for the raw material for each helipad which is equipped with lights and ramps.
John spoke to Leicester Novus Rotary Club on May 30, 2019 and immediately club members started collecting aluminium cans. As word spread through this website and the Novus Facebook page, more and more donors have started passing on empty drinks cans.
The wonderfully-named South Leicestershire Litter Wombles was set up at the end of February 2019 and now has 634 members on its Facebook page. Already they have collected hundreds of kilograms of litter and on 19.11.2019 handed over three bags containing 900 crushed cans. Even more will be handed over to Novus on 28.11.2019.
A health company in Grantham saw our publicity and want to contribute cans. Similarly, officers at Loughborough police station are making a weekly trip to leave about 100 aluminium cans a week in the collecting bin in Shepshed provided via Shepshed Rotary.
The Rotary Clubs of Bradgate, Oadby, Kibworth and Fleckney, Sleaford, Sleaford Kesteven and Lincoln Colonia are all working with Novus, whose co-ordinator is Jim Matthews. He says: “It has been amazing how many cans are coming from so many sources, including the Pizza Parlour in Belgrave Gate, Leicester, and Zeph’s Cafe, at Oadby Trinity Methodist Church. Novus Rotary is very grateful to everyone who is contributing.”
Jim’s four-year-old granddaughter Isabel helped count the 22 bags. A one-tonne builders’ bag contained 1,600 crushed cans.
If you want to help by donating cash (to buy collecting bins to reduce litter and make donating cans easier) or to give aluminium cans, please go to the Contact Us tab at the top of this page and e-mail us..
Last edited: Midnight on Monday, 25.11.2019
