Paddington’s litter heroes set sail for the Great British Spring Clean

Each year, The Paddington Partnership celebrates Keep Britain Tidy’s Great British Spring Clean by organising a large-scale clean-up of our local canal. GBSC is a nationwide campaign encouraging people across the country to clean up the parks, streets, beaches and waterways in their area to tackle pollution and maintain clean, safe outdoor spaces for everyone to enjoy. This year over 100 volunteers from 13 Paddington companies teamed up to clean up the canal on our doorstep.

Colleagues from IQVIA, Vertex, Vodafone, Paddington Central, Merchant Square, Equinor, Derwent London, Cerner, Tishman Speyer, Privée Concierge, Addison Lee and Stay City armed themselves with litter pickers and nets and sailed out along the Grand Union Canal to pull waste from the water. Volunteers took to the canal in electric GoBoats, canoes and on paddleboards, working to keep the canal clean, spotting local wildlife along the route. Keep Britain Tidy themselves paid us a visit (and jumped on a paddleboard to help!) and our very favourite litter hero was canine Captain Ralph, who accompanied the Tishman Speyer team on their boat.

The volunteers filled 41 buckets with the litter they collected, pulling 131 food wrappers from the canal and retrieving an astonishing 238 plastic bags from under the water. Our most prolific litter picking team managed to collect 140 items of rubbish from the water in just one hour. The rubbish removed from the canal over the course of the day filled two large skips, and really highlighted the scale of pollution in London’s waterways. Activities such as these help to maintain our natural environment, and keep public spaces clean and safe for everyone to enjoy.

We’re so grateful to our volunteers for working to clean up the canal, to GoBoat and Active360 for getting our colleagues safely on the water, and to Canal & River Trust for their guidance and support.

As the weather turns warmer and colleagues return to offices more frequently, we’re delivering many diverse outdoor volunteering projects for teams from across Paddington. If you feel inspired by the incredible work of our volunteers and would like to get your colleagues involved, do get in touch with our community team.