A GROUP of volunteers who helped clean up a mass of fly-tipped waste at a Worcestershire beauty spot have been nominated for an award.
The group, who cleared up rubbish at Hartlebury Common in December last year, have been nominated for a BBC Make a Difference Award.
This is in recognition of their efforts clearing up an eyesore rubbish pile which had been on the site for three years.
Clearing Hartlebury Common was the biggest project The Pickup Artists have ever taken on, taking more than three years, 500+ volunteer hours and £26,000 worth of funding and support from Worcestershire County Council.
The WCC Greenspace Team spent more than 370 hours clearing the overgrowth so that the volunteers could reach the fly-tipped rubbish and litter.
READ MORE: Hartlebury Common finally cleared of waste
In October 2018, the group of litter picking volunteers the Pickup Artists arranged to pick up the litter around Hartlebury Common’s nature reserve with Worcestershire County Council’s Greenspace Team and the Hartlebury Common Local Group (HCLG).
Headed up by Keep Britain Tidy litter heroes ambassador Karen Blanchfield and Pauline Round, who both volunteer for the Pickup Artists, the group were shown around the fly-tipped area with Martin Barnett, WCC countryside officer and asked if they would help them to clean it up.
Martin Barnett, Countryside Sites Officer for WCC, said: "This is a proud moment for all involved in this work where a persistent issue of illegal dumping of waste has been addressed.
"A great challenge overcome by the persistent work and passion of volunteers, local people and our small team of WCC officers."
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Karen Blanchfield said: "Normally I’m one of many words but when Martin showed us the area in question, it left me speechless at the sheer size of the fly-tipped area.
"To me it looked like a landfill site higher than three metres tall and it stretched 100’s of yards.
"How and where would we start was in my head but knowing our fantastic community of volunteers that we are blessed to have, we agreed to just start somewhere.
"That somewhere lead to us to take on the biggest project the pickup artists have ever seen."
Excavators were needed to remove tons of heavy fly-tipped domestic waste, skips and trailers were filled with thousands of bags of litter over three years.
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