Wexford Tidy Towns undertook several areas to improve during the Summer months with our largest project being St. Peter’s Square which was given a much needed facelift to this beautiful spot in our town. The major upgrade included painting flower tubs, the bandstand and fountain, cleaning the area and replanting the flowerbeds. Our volunteers are a real asset to our town and have shown the great work they can do to make this significant improvement to St. Peter’s Square. A lot of love and attention went into this project so go have a look at this area in our town, a beautiful place to stop and sit or pass through.

We also focused on several other areas, flower beds were weeded and got ready for the new plants, Wexford in Bloom did their annual flowering of the town, the anti-gum litter campaign was running, there was painting, weeding and sweeping around Clifford Street/Bride street which made a significant improvement to this area. We also focused on the main streets of our town, carparks, the Bullring and Crescent – All Working together to keep Wexford Clean and Beautiful.

We would like to thank Stuart in Aldi for the donation of some lovely unsold flowers, burst bags of compost and bark that he has donated to Wexford Tidy Towns. We would also like to thank John in Tesco who has donated unsold plants to use in our projects. We are so grateful and will put all the lovely plants and compost to great use. Thank you to you both for your donation this Summer now we can bloom up the town even more.

Thanks to all our volunteers for everything they have achieved this year. We are always looking for more volunteers everyone is welcome and there is something to do for everyone. We really need your help so why don’t you come on down for a couple of hours to help out. If you have a community project in mind or would like to do a litter pick walk yourself get in touch and we can supply litter pickers. Keep an eye on our Facebook or website for details of upcoming events. We meet on Saturdays and some evening during the week if you can help in any way get in touch.

Wexford Tidy Towns have been hard at work this Spring holding some very successful Action Days, organising clean-ups, launching several new initiatives and working with the community to keep Wexford clean and beautiful. Here are some of our highlights so far this year:

We got off to a great start on the first action day on 16th January. Some of us headed to the rocks to help out the Mary’s G.A.A who were holding a clean-up there. The rest of us got lots of flower bulbs sown around the town thanks to Woodies who donated hundreds of flower bulbs to help flower up the town this year.

We launched a couple of initiatives including looking at placing new cigarette bins around the main street and repairing the broken ones. Also we saw the successful launch of the Mutt Mitts initiative with the installation of new bins plus mutt mitts dispensers (doggy poo bags) placed on some of the main dog walking routes in the town. We hope to expand this scheme to other areas in the future. Please use the bags and bins to make this initiative work and see an increase of bin/dispenser locations.

Another Action Day that was held was at the Knock in Bishopswater on Saturday March 12th. Thank you to everyone who came as we got some amazing work done. Some of our finds included 2 trolleys, a bike, half a pram and 32 bags of rubbish as you can see from the photos! Our volunteers removed a huge amount of rubbish and really improved the area.

As April came we saw the launch of 2016 An Taisce National Spring Clean. We held several clean-ups this month as well as encouraged people in the community to get involved in keeping their own areas clean. We met up near Woodies and collected 12 bags of rubbish a lot of it was fast food related so please bin your rubbish when you are done eating! Lots of weeding, planting and cleaning got done in St. Peter’s Square Saturday April 23rd with further painting planned for the area at one of our evening meetups during the week. We would like to thank Stuart at Aldi for donating lots of plants to Wexford Tidy Towns/Wexford in Bloom.

Wexford Tidy Towns have lots more events planned in the coming months keep an eye out for Wexford in Bloom who are hard at work getting ready for another Summer as they work with businesses and residents to flower up the town. We are always looking for new volunteers for our Action Days/Clean-ups or to work with groups who would like to keep their own community areas or estates clean just get in touch or turn up at one of our events.

Tidy Towns will be holding an old battery and mobile phone recycling day in Tesco Wexford on Saturday 14th November. We will be there from 10am to 4pm, so please check your drawers, mantelpieces, shelves, cupboards and boxes for all your old batteries and mobile phones. Support your Tidy Towns by bringing them along to Tesco on the day and recycle those unwanted batteries and phones responsibly.

Also at our stand we will be giving out free cigarette butt pouches and signing people up to our Green Dog Walker programme. We can answer any questions you may have about Tidy Towns and fill you on our activities. Please share this information with your family and friends so we can have a big response to this collection.

If anyone could spare 90 minutes on the day to help us out we would really appreciate it as we will need 4 people every 90 minutes. We will be there with our stand, chairs and tables. Please email info@tidytowns.com or contact us on Facebook for more information or to volunteer to help us out on the day.

Thank you to all our hard working volunteers who took part in our micro cleans and action days in July, some more great work was done to enhance the appearance of our town. Our first action day of the month was on the 4th July which saw us meet down on the Quays to clean the area around the rocks where there were lots of discarded cans, bottles, coffee mugs, sandwich wrappings and more. Please remember if you are enjoying your lunch etc. sitting on the walls on the Quays to dispose of your rubbish properly and not just throw it down in on the rocks (they are not a bin!) it is harmful to the environment and is also very difficult to reach in between the rocks. All our volunteers on the day did tremendous work though to remove a lot of this rubbish.

Our next big action day was on the 18th July where we met at the Nicky Rackard statute and tackled the alley leading from the bottom of Skeffington Street into McCauleys’ car park. We painted, litter picked, removed graffiti and generally improved the area. It was in a bad way and got some great attention from our wonderful volunteers. Thank you to everyone who gave Skeffington Street an amazing facelift, the place looks fantastic.

Well done to all our Wednesday volunteers too who come along every week to take part in micro enhancements in our town centre from litter picks (which include lots of cigarette butts!), painting and small maintenance projects. They are only one hour long and you can meet us at the bullring at 6pm on Wednesdays. We are always delighted when anyone joins us for a cleanup and if you can bring a friend with you even better.

We also handed out lots of cigarette butt storage cases this month to members of the public and local businesses during our activities to encourage people to stop littering their butts. Even if there is no bin nearby these cases can be used to store your butts safely in your pocket until you find one. Cigarette butts are one of our main pieces of litters we find during our clean-ups and cause huge problems for the environment as well as been unsightly. We can easily pick up 1000s of these during each cleanup. In the photo below taken by Denis Collins our chairman who counted 538 cigarette butts that he picked up just in the Bullring one night and there were others picking up equal amounts too. Please help us by stop throwing your butts on the ground if you smoke and instead dispose of them responsibly. We spend a lot of time picking up butts that could be better used on other projects.

A big thanks also to all our residents who continue to keep their own area clean. There have been great projects going on from installing new flower beds, frequent cleanings and painting community areas. Well done to all the residents for their great efforts you are a credit to your community. Please keep up the great work, by everyone keeping you own place clean and being responsible when you are around the town together we can keep Wexford clean and beautiful, more information on the next action Saturday in August will follow shortly.