Meet Clean & Green – The litter pickers cleaning up the streets and Solihull’s image – Birmingham Live

When Paul ‘Pablo’ Sultana approached Solihull Council five years ago with ambitious plans to set up a litter picking group in North Solihull, he was warned nobody would join.

Council officers said he would struggle to find a group of volunteers willing to pound the streets and clear up Chelmsley Wood, Kingshurst, Smith’s Wood and surrounding areas.

Now, Clean & Green, which he set up anyway, is the largest litter-picking group in the whole of the borough – and in some areas, Pablo and his 500 volunteers are making themselves obsolete.

Read more: Shopping trolleys pulled from water as litter pickers unite to ‘tidy up’ Solihull streets

BirminghamLive was invited on a routine pick in Kingshurst, an area in the north of Solihull which some say is in need of some TLC after being “neglected” for many years.

The area’s long-awaited redevelopment – that will see millions invested to revamp the town centre – finally looks set to get underway in December. But it has been dogged with delays over the years.

Council planners have previously said the design of Kingshurst Parade has aged badly. And when you arrive, you don’t immediately get the impression it has been well-loved.

Kingshurst has an unfortunate reputation of being a little unloved
(Image: Josh Sandiford / BirminghamLive)

However, volunteers say that if we had gone for this stroll a few years ago, things would have looked much different.

Locals are now used to seeing the pickers out with their hi-vis jackets on. This, volunteers say, is making residents think about how to properly dispose of rubbish.

As we meet outside of the shuttered Kingshurst Community Centre – another indication of what some might call untapped potential – we are each paired up with another litter picker. I joined Pablo.

“You’ll get quite expert after an hour,” he tells me, as I clumsily try to hold my litter picker, sack hoop and recorder.

Pablo explains that while litter picking is a “massive part” of what Clean & Green do, there is a lot more to the group’s work.

“It’s run by volunteers for volunteers supporting the community,” he says.

“Picking litter is just a small part of it but we also do things like tree-planting to clean up the area to make it more beautiful and make people feel more loved.”

Volunteers were paired up before we headed out
(Image: Josh Sandiford / BirminghamLive)

The group has been hosting “wellbeing walks” throughout the pandemic.

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Source: https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/meet-clean–green-litter-21052939