Wick man's clean up efforts acknowledged with national award

Environmental charity 'Keep Scotland Beautiful' has awarded Allan Bruce with a Clean Up Scotland Hero award for his efforts to reverse the country’s litter emergency.

Allan is instrumental in keeping Wick, his local area, tidy and litter free.

Three years ago, he organised his first Spring Clean event and has continued ever since, with the latest event involving 35 local volunteers.

Allan is no stranger to solo litter picking either, regularly coming home with bags of rubbish long before he ever organised his first big event.

He is also the Vice Chair of a local organisation called Wick Paths Group whose purpose is to maintain local walkways for everyone to access and enjoy. The group has fundraised and been able to purchase a lot of equipment to maintain paths and use for litter picks.

In January 2023 Allan was a winner of Keep Scotland Beautiful’s partnership with behaviour change app LitterLotto. With his £500 winnings, Allan purchased litter pickers and rubbish bag hoops for two local primary schools.

Through his role as a member of the local community council, he has attended primary and secondary school seminars to discuss topics such as keeping the town tidy, as well as organising a competition for school pupils to design posters to encourage dog owners to pick up their dog waste.

Donna, Allan’s wife who nominated him for the award, said: “Allan’s such a well-known person in the community so when he does put out a plea for help he gets a lot of people coming forward.

“But he doesn’t just wait for people to come to him: he’s pro-active and gets other people involved.”

Keen to get young people involved, Allan was able to purchase 50 litter pickers and bag hoops for local schools to do their own litter picks.

Donna said: “After that Allan wrote to the teacher with a letter to the pupils to thank them for what they’ve done and the impact they’ve had on their community so it’s for education as well, they didn’t just do it and forgot about it, they actually got thanked for it and a little bit of information about why it’s so important.”

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