After a very successful end to September being awarded the Bronze Award and The Gum Litter Award again and the Diversity Award in the Tidy Towns competition, we were back hard at work keeping the streets and areas of Wexford clean and tidy during October. Fifteen volunteers met on Saturday October 3rd to tackle Fettis Lane removing a large amount of cigarette butts from the area. Please remember to bin your butts or get one of our free cigarette pouches.

On October 10th we met in the Bullring to undertake our winter planting around the town. Thank you to all the volunteers who turned up. Wexford in Bloom did a wonderful job during the Summer months with the hanging baskets and window box and large planter displays. Our volunteers planted out our winter plants that will add beauty to our town during the months ahead.

Wexford Town came alive with the Opera and Fringe Festival during October. Thanks to Brian and Barry for inviting the Wexford Tidy Towns Group to the Spiegletent for a night of live music during the festival. Some our members were about on Fireworks night helping keep the area clean. Thank you to every member of the community and visitors who used the litter bins provided and disposed of their rubbish responsibly. We hope everyone had a fun festival this year.

Our last Action Day of the month had us out on the Rosslare Road on the 31st of October planting daffodil bulbs in preparation for Spring. Thank you to all our volunteers on the day and we look forward to seeing the flowers sprouting in the Spring. Thank you to Roisin for making us tea/coffee at the Maudlintown community house, very much appreciated. Please come along and join us at some of our future activities in November.

Wexford Tidy Towns attended the annual Tidy Towns Awards, on Monday 28th September 2015, for the final results of this year’s competition. Martin Kelleher, Managing Director of SuperValu, the competition’s main sponsor for 24 years, was there to present prizes. This year had the highest number of entries to date with 862 towns and villages entering the competition.

We were really happy with our achievement in 2015 Tidy Towns Awards receiving both the Bronze Award and the National Gum Litter Award again. Wexford Tidy Towns were also the first winners of the SuperValu National Diversity Award. The SuperValu Diversity Award is new to the competition this year. This award recognised our groups efforts to include all the community on an inter-generational and inter-cultural basis, on both the committee and the work our volunteers do. We showed we have a shared goal of bettering the community by working together and involving all members of the community, which is what the spirit of the competition is all about.

Overall it was a very rewarding day and was great to see our hard work being recognised on a national level. We would like to thank everyone involved, all our volunteers and members of our committee, because if we all didn’t work together we would never have achieved this fantastic result. Well done to everyone who has contributed in any way over the last year. We look forward to maintaining and improving our current standard in the Tidy Town awards and will see what next year brings! Come along and join us at any of our regular clean-ups and Action Days.

See the 2015 report here: 2015 Wexford Report

Thank you to all the members of the Wexford community, business owners, residents and visitors alike who have done a great job trying to keep outside their own homes, shops and premises litter free. Wexford Tidy Towns will be attending the Tidy Towns results in Dublin on Monday the 28th September so we look forward to seeing what the final results are then. Best of luck to everyone involved in Tidy Towns.

Thank you also to everyone who joined us in August and September for our weekly cleans on Wednesday evenings or one of our Action Days on Saturdays. We met for our Action Days in August on the 8th to tackle the South of the Main Street and Peter’s Square and on the 22nd to paint, litter pick and weed along the Quay. We also had some visitors to our town, a group of young Canadian Christians, in August who teamed up with members of Wexford Tidy Towns and achieved some fantastic work during their visit to the town. They were responsible for the newly painted rails in Redmond Square and at Common Quay. Thank you for all your help. it was lovely getting to meet you. We were very happy with all the work that they did while visiting Wexford.

In September we continued with our weekly cleanups on Wednesdays and Action Days on Saturdays. We met at Peter’s Square on the 12th and on the 19th a group got involved in a beach clean on Kaat Strand. Here are some of our volunteers on the day cleaning up our coastline.

If anyone would like to join us for one of our activities we regularly update our website, Facebook and twitter with details of our next meetup or send us a message on Facebook and we will add you to our contact list. We need all types of people to join us, there is something for everyone so we hope to see you at a cleanup soon.