Okehampton’s schoolchildren helped clean approximately 12 miles of the town’s streets on Saturday (March 26) as part of the Great British Spring Clean event.

Armed with litter pickers and gloves, children from Okehampton Primary School and St James C of E Primary School assisted members of the Okement Rivers Improvement Group (ORIG), Community Roadside Action Party and Plastic Free Community Okehampton and Martha the dog to rid 12 miles of pavement of drinks bottles, sweet wrappers, drink cans, food packaging and even an abandoned bathroom suite.

Event coordinator Fran Rickwood said: ‘I have helped organise community litter picks in the past but this year there was far less litter to be found generally speaking.

‘There are, of course, the usual litter hot spots but otherwise the town is much tidier. This could be a combination of improved diligence on an individual level along with the continued efforts of ORIG who monthly help clear our town and river of litter as well the work carried out by local residents from the Community Roadside Action Party who regularly litter pick their patch.

‘But on top of this there are the enthusiastic efforts of Rodney [street cleaner] who is seen around town tirelessly clearing kerbs and paths of litter.’

The children managed to collect a full hamper of litter which they presented to Okehampton’s street clean Rodney Woods along with a framed picture drawn by Okehampton Primary School pupil, which will adorn Mr Woods’ trolley as a thank you for keeping the streets clean.

All litter pickers received a thank you from a member of Costcutter who offered each picker a free drink.

Okehampton’s environmental groups have already planned their next move to make the town greener.

Plastic Free Community Okehampton plans to work with local shops and businesses to try and find alternatives to single use plastic in the hope that it will reduce the number of used drink bottles around the town.

Previously, the Plastic Free community has organised the collection of recyclable plastics for DCW, a waste management company, which set up the Recycle & Raise initiative which challenged people to collect as much plastic waste as possible between November and the end of February.