Man walks 26 miles through Trafford picking up litter in a bid to clean up the streets

A council worker recently completed a twenty-six mile-long litter picking marathon in a bid to clean up Greater Manchester’s streets.

Mark Dale, who works as an Environmental Improvement Manager for Trafford Council, completed the incredible challenge as a part of Keep Britain Tidy’s annual Great British Spring Clean campaign.

Mark has always been passionate about removing litter and rubbish from the streets, and has supported and taken part in the campaign several times over the last couple of years. But, for 2021’s event, he took things one (or a couple of thousand) steps further by challenging himself to pick up a marathon’s worth of litter – that’s 26.2 miles of litter picking, to be precise. 

Trafford Council

He set off from Trafford Town Hall at 6am on Friday, June 11th, and picked up litter in Old Trafford, Trafford Park, Sale, Altrincham, Urmston and Stretford before making his way back to the Town Hall ten hours later.

He was helped along the way by members of the Grip Adventure group.

Mark, who has won a number of awards for his anti-litter initiatives, said on the motive behind his marathon litter pick: “We take part in the Great British Spring Clean campaign every year and in the first week of this year’s campaign, we collected 300 bags of rubbish off the streets. 

“But I wanted to do something different as well and that’s when I came up with the Marathon Litter Pick idea.

“When I first started out I was concerned that I might not finish – twenty-six miles is a long way. But as I got further into the litter pick, I realised I was eating up the ground. I’m really pleased to have competed this challenge and I hope that my efforts might inspire those that blight our communities with litter to go that one step more and take their litter to a bin and put it in.”

Trafford Council

Councillor Stephen Adshead, Trafford Council’s Executive Member for Environmental and Regulatory Services, said on Mark’s achievement: “Well done to Mark for this fantastic effort – he really has done a tremendous job supporting the Great British Spring Clean.

“Trafford Council is proud of its town centres and communities and we want to ensure they remain as beautiful as possible for future generations to enjoy.”

Nearly 3,000 volunteers have since signed up to the council’s #BeResponsible pledge, and have all received their own litter picking kit. 

For more information and to sign up to the pledge yourself, visit the Trafford Council website here.