Bo'ness after school club picks up boards to help keep local areas clean

After receiving £1,000 from the Tesco blue token scheme, The Kidz Stop worked with Walker Timber, 2 Minute Beach Clean, Falkirk Council, a local community clean-up group, local councillor Ann Ritchie and the Friends of Kinneil group to deliver the project, with local children helping to install the facilities earlier this month.

Sharon Gardner from Kidz Stop explained more about the after school club’s latest environmental work.

She said: “Every summer holidays we do a different theme. The year previous was about nurdles, the plastic pellets that wash up on the Foreshore in their thousands.

"So every summer we do a project like that, helping the local environment.

"I had been on holiday up north and I saw these boards, the beaches up there were stunning, very clean.

"So we applied for the Tesco blue token scheme funding. That was just before Covid, so we never heard back as everything had shut down. But then after Covid they gave us £1,000 at the end of last year. So we got in touch with 2 Minute Beach Clean, who make the boards.

"We tend to do litter picking at the Foreshore in the summer anyway so we thought this would be great. We agreed to also put one at Kinneil Estate, which is a well used area.

"The boards cost £750 and we had to get posts and cement to install them, and we obviously had to buy the litter pickers and bags to fill them.”

Sharon revealed that the group aren’t stopping there, and her hope that this scheme will change the mindset of local kids.

She said: "They have been used already, so we have applied for a council grant to get more boards.

"I think they are important, especially when you have lots of groups doing a lot of work in the community, keeping the place tidy, and the clean-up group members are basically out every day doing litter picks.

"Hopefully the kids will take pride in their community as they grow up. They really enjoyed getting involved.”