The Friends of Dumbarton Foreshore was started by Zoe Weir and her family because they were appaled by the amount of litter on the beach.  Since she launched the group it gained the support of volunteers from Plastic Free West Dunbartonshire and now they meet up once a week to carry out a beach clean up.  

Highways England has urged drivers to do their bit to help reduce litter found on motorways, each year 200,000 bags of litter are collected from the side of the roads every year.  This year they have stepped up to support the Great British Spring Clean.  

The Aberdeenshire Litter Initiave in Inverurie has been running for the past 5 years with over 500 registered volunteers, these volunteers choose a street in which to keep clean with them having complete control over how much time and effort they put in.  

This weeks Rubbish Roundup features stories including a 6 year old boy in Aberdeen who is encouraging people to pick up litter after he found a 26 year old crisp packet, temporary wheelie bins are set to replace steel alloy container which were stolen in Solihull, and finally there has been a backlash after litter patrol officers followed a woman into a doctors surgery to fine her.

A new Facebook group set up in Spalding is to help fight the problem of fly-tipping in the local area, so far to date over 700 people have joined the group.  The pages owner, Mark hopes to have groups set up to cover Lincolnshire and to recruit so many volunteers that it acts as a deterrent

Wet wipes that have been flushed down the toilet made up a huge 77% of the waste that was picked up during a charity litter pick on the banks of the River Thames.  To put it in perspective 4000 wipes were picked up along 400 metres of river bank.  

This weeks Rubbish Roundup features stories including a mum from Doncaster is fed up with seeing rubbish in gutters and country lanes she has set up a clean up group, new calls to tackle marine litter in Shetland after a photograph was taken of a bird who had died from entanglement, and finally a Leicester company has been fined for allowing litter to fall on the country's road.  

Nestle has become one of the latest strategic partners of Project Stop which is an initiative to help prevent plastic pollution in South East Asia.  Estimates say that there is around 150 million tonnes of plastic in our oceans at the moment, with over half of it coming from 5 countries.

Despite all of the clean ups and education programmes, litter is still a huge problem and it costs local authorities around £1 billion per year to clean up, with the main source of litter being chewing gum and cigarette butts.  

Over the festive season you would have seen plenty of it over the festive season, but this could be bad for the environment.  Standard glitter is made from plastics which can take 450 years to break down