Members of South Leicestershire Litter Wombles have passed the 100,000-can mark.
The fabulous Facebook group currently has 1,498 members dedicated to clearing our public spaces of disfiguring and dangerous litter.
Since the autumn of 2019 they have been separating aluminium drinks cans from the rest of the rubbish and donating them to Helipads For Hospitals.
Most —but by no means all — get taken in by Geoff Walker, known to his pals as Stomper, because he crushes them underfoot to save time and fuel when they are collected by Helipads For Hospitals volunteers.
But even more helpfully than that, Geoff weighs the donated cans and calculates the number of cans, using the figure of 14.5 grammes as an average, allowing for small cans containing tonic or gin mixers to medium-sized cans like those for soft drinks and bigger cans for beer and lager.
His most recent reckoning brings to 100,000 cans passed on to Helipads For Hospitals.
Included in his tally for August 30, 2020, were large sections of extruded aluminium door frames. When Helipads For Hospitals founder John Nowell went to Geoff’s on Bank Holiday Monday, the haul filled his trailer. Geoff estimated that the combined weight of the frames and the other donated aluminium totalled 216kg, equal to 15,400 cans.
Thanks to Geoff’s diligent record-keeping, the charity has a clear idea about how much more aluminium is needed before it can provide the raw material to build a helipad onsite at Leicester Royal Infirmary.
You can see Geoff’s record of each batch of cans collected since November 2019 and the accumulative total in the image below…
Last edited: 21:15 on Bank Holiday Monday, August 31, 2020