Act for change: woven kinship peebles cuddy litter pick
Woven Kinship CIC hosted the Peebles Cuddy litter pick with fish and invertebrates identification session on Sunday 2nd March. Read on to find out how it went!
The event was held on 02/03/25 from 10am-12pm. There was 22 participants. The age range 3 – 65 (10 kids, 12 adults).
“A community litter pick along a designated stretch of the Peebles Cuddy (Eddleston water) which is known as an area locally that needs attention and cleaning up. There is a sense from many that the Cuddy is ‘dirty’, so Tweed Forum agreed to lead a session at the start of the litter pick, to help inform participants what lives in the river and how it is a sign of clean waters. We wanted people to gain an understanding of how alive the Cuddy is. To foster a deeper sense of care and stewardship. The Tweed Forum ID session was very well received and people said they learned a lot. Tweed Forum have said they would be happy to provide sessional support at future events which is fantastic. The litter pick itself worked very well. We used SBCAN budget to invest in basic kit we can use in future: high vis vests for adults & kids, adult & kid latex gloves, covered clipboards for info gathering, a poster design which can be amended and reused in future. We hired pick-up sticks and arranged refuse collection from SBC and borrowed extra kit from a local group. We collected 22 bags of rubbish, 1 double mattress, a large sheet of lino, 1 traffic cone & 1 large plastic picnic blanket (a third of a big black bin sack was filled with dog poo from a short section of the river side – yuk! There was too much to do the whole area but this was an achievement!) We got positive feedback from participants about wanting to do more events like this in future so we are exploring ideas around a themed quarterly litter pick, with a supporting session from Tweed Forum/other local organisation, and possibly monthly/bi-monthly litter picks to continue building relationships and connections within the community, and to keep the Cuddy looking cared for. Everyone had a great time and many passers by said thank you for the work we were doing. Later that evening I walked along the Cuddy path and felt so happy to see it so neat looking! A big thank you to SBCAN for funding this – it seems to have ignited a valuable spark in Peebles.”