Rory has joined the clean-up trend and look at the difference he is making in Hartlepool!

Rory is only eight years old but he really wants to make a difference to the environment and he is certainly off to a flying start.

He is collecting one or two big bags of rubbish himself from the streets of the town each and every week and has already tidied up in Clavering, Burn Valley, the seafront and Rossmere.

The Eldon Grove Academy student becomes the latest in an ever-growing army of volunteers who have joined the Hartlepool Big Town Tidy Up group.

The Facebook-based group only formed in February 2019 but its membership levels have rocketed to 2,700 people already.

Rory’s proud mum Kate, 40, an insurance administrator, said: “He did his first one and it snowballed. He is out every week now.”

Thanks to HBTTU, Rory – whose dad Andrew Betts, 44, is a golf professional – is equipped with hoops and green bags so that he can litter pick properly.

Kate added: “He must have been learning about the environment at school and he is really in to it. When he is out, he will say ‘I really don’t understand why people think it is okay to throw their rubbish away’. He gets quite annoyed.

"He has been collecting one to two bags a week since half term. We found HBTTU on Facebook and Rory loves the encouragement he gets from other members when we post photos of what he has collected.

"It is really important that people are trying to clean the town.”

HBTTU was formed in February 2019 by Jason Bland and Danny Oram. The group has the support Hartlepool Borough Council and wants to get across the message that ‘this is everyone’s fight’.

In June 2020, the group had 1,000 members. Numbers have almost trebled since then.

The group’s ethos is litter collecting is seen as positive, therapeutic and a chance to make a difference to the community.

Members have collected everything from a guitar to a plastic banana skin, while a pregnancy test and part of a shopping trolley have also been found by anti-litter campaigners.

To find out more about the group, including how to join, visit the Hartlepool Big Town Tidy Up Facebook page.

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