Top tips to organise a clean-up on your canal or river

Arranging a clean-up on your local waterway is a good way to make a real difference to your local waterside environment.  It can be great fun too - and it's simple to organise.

1. Contact the relevant landowner and/or navigation authority.

2. Agree a method statement and risk assessment with them; this is simply setting out what you plan to do, and thinking about what could go wrong and what could be done to avoid that.

3. Work out what equipment you might need, and where the rubbish collected will go.  The navigation authority or local authority should be able to help with both of these.

4. Agree a time and date with everyone.  Make sure everyone's agreed on the plan of action.

5. Canvass for volunteers locally - tell the local media beforehand.

6. Turn up, have fun!  Celebrate the success afterwards.

7. Tell everyone about it; broadcast your photos - plan the next one!

Any Questions: Ask Jo Gilbertson or Neil Edwards at IWA Head Office.

David King of IWA's Milton Keynes Branch tells how they got on...

Milton Keynes is one of many IWA branches that engage in regular active volunteering together with British Waterways, in order to maintain the navigability of the Grand Union Canal through our area which includes an 11 mile stretch through the town of Milton Keynes and passes through the centre of Leighton Buzzard a few miles further south towards London.

We began our canal clean up operations some 30 years ago and these now take place twice in each year, usually in March/April and October thus avoiding the busiest boating periods.  In the world that we now live in, it is necessary to present British Waterways with a Method Statement and Risk Assessment when making formal application to undertake a clean up on the waterways.

The event is, as always, automatically covered by IWA’s insurance.  British Waterways provide us with a 70ft hopper and a 40ft pan, the latter being shallow drafted and enabling us to reach the offside of the channel and clear rubbish there.

British Waterways also provides us with life jackets, hard hats, high viz vests and safety boots for all those who are working on the two boats being used in the operation. They also provide gloves, litter pickers and black sacks to enable us to clear rubbish along the towpath.  The Branch has over the years invested some of its funds in the manufacture of grappling hooks. We have some heavy duty hooks which we drag behind the hopper and this enables us to very effectively clear the centre of the channel. We have lighter weight hooks which can be thrown into the water from the bank for the purpose of concentrating activity at bridge holes or where public paths meet the canal.

Our clean ups, which cover a distance of about 12 miles, usually start at midday on a Friday and finish at mid-day on the following Sunday. We operate in an area where we can arrange our
overnight stops at convenient canalside pubs where the social aspect of the event can be enjoyed.

At our latest clean up, where about 12 tons of rubbish was collected, we also had in support of our operation a British Waterways boat with a JCB crane aboard. This proved invaluable in recovering a sunken metal dinghy and also an office safe which would otherwise have been beyond our capacity to retrieve.

We generally get around 50 volunteers, and the camaraderie and satisfaction at removing so much hazardous rubbish cannot be underestimated. This is very much a team effort and the age range can be from young teens to around 80.  We have found it a great way to engage with youngsters and give them a better perspective of the value of a thriving inland waterway system.