by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Ian Blackburn(left) Phil Barton (right)
Environmental reporting business Love Clean Streets has announced a key industry figure as its first official Ambassador.
Phil Barton, who was the Chief Executive for Keep Britain Tidy until last year, was introduced to the Love Clean Streets reporting app during his seven years’ service at the charity.
His role will be to encourage everyone to use the Love Clean Streets app to help make their local streets cleaner and happier, with a particular focus on young people.
Phil said: “I have been passionate about the environment since I was a teenager and hope to use my time as a Love Clean Streets Ambassador to engage more people, particularly young people, in using the app both to learn about and take action for their local environments.
“I am honoured to be joining the Love Clean Streets team as the company increases its environmental impact across the UK and beyond.
“The app is straight forward and intuitive to use. It helps to improve and protect our streets through better and cheaper management. During my time at Keep Britain Tidy we supported and promoted the app from the beginning and it is fantastic to see how the product has expanded, recently reaching one million interactions.”
Love Clean Streets Founder, Ian Blackburn, said: “We are delighted to have Phil on board. With his background and experience, along with the passion for the environment, we know he is the right person to help us spread the Love Clean Streets message - helping everyone make their town a cleaner, happier place to live.”
Phil’s role will begin with piloting talks in secondary schools across the country, focusing on the use of Love Clean Streets technology to further the Eco-Schools agenda.
Phil said: “Eco-Schools is an international award programme that guides schools on their sustainable journey, providing a framework to help embed these principles into the heart of school life. I believe there is real potential for Love Clean Streets to help engage young people and to support them in taking action through the use of smart phone technology.”
The things is though that if people really are so concerned about clean streets and a clean environment why do they seem to abdicate their own responsibility more often than not to the local authorities with words such as “it's the council's job” or “the council really has to do something about this”. Clean streets and a clean environment begins with each and everyone of us and also ends there.
In some countries it is actually the householders or tenants' responsibility to keep the stretch of pavement up to the curb clean of litter and such and also snow, and it is part of being a citizen of those countries. In Britain, for some reason, all too many people don't seem to see that they have such responsibilities. Some even seem to go as far as to deposit excess waste from their homes, in bin sacks, in the road ditches or parks and open spaces and then call the council complaining about the litter. Clean streets and clean environment begins with us and that means not littering in the first place.
© 2016
