Newark company Novati organises community litter pick in collaboration with Newark and Sherwood District Council

A team of community minded volunteers from a Newark company have cleaned the streets and collected dozens of bags of litter.

Staff from waste management firm, Novati, set out to collect litter in the Beacon Hill and Clay Lane areas of Newark this week.

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Mandy Simpson, HR and wellbeing at Novati, helped organise the litter pick.

"We're doing local litter pick because we really wanted to do volunteering in the community." she said.

"We sent out a survey to staff asking for suggestions and this came out on top. We are hoping that it will be the first of many.

"This morning a group of about 15 of us went out around the industrial estate and ended up filling 18 bags before we even started our afternoon litter pick.

"We found all sorts and it was hard but it's good to just get it off the streets.

"Newark and Sherwood District Council also helped us out by providing the hi-vis vests, litter grabbers and the bags for us to use."

Mandy talked about what more could be done in the future, saying: "We really hope that it encourages people to be more mindful.

"We could also do with more bins in the area, but even so people could just take it home and put it in their bins.

"We hope to do more volunteering in the future and we are always finding ways to support charities. Later this month we are doing a bake off for MacMillan.

"We are in the waste business, but we want to help other people, we want to give back to the community."

Elaine Dawes, learning and development at Novati, was part of the team doing the litter picking and said: "It's incredible the things you find.

"We've had empty vodka bottles, cans, the usual crisps packets and sweet wrappers but we've even had parts of cars.

"We are actually finding a lot of discarded face masks and some of the other stuff is disgusting; dog poo bags, used nappies, pregnancy tests, condoms and bottles of wee.

"But the reaction has been great, we're really pleased. People have been coming up and thanking us, telling us we're doing a good job."

In total, 32 bags of litter were collected.