Great Cumbrian Litter Pick 2026

Our Great Cumbrian Litter Pick returned for its ninth year over the 27 ^– 28 March. Each year the event aims to bring together active litter picking groups, businesses, and schools across Cumbria to help make the county a greener place, and each year we see both familiar and new groups joining. After nine years this festival has great impact and importance across our county. So, thank you to all of you who took part!

The festival builds upon our litter awareness work such as the “Leave no trace” and “There are no litter fairies” campaigns which stemmed from the increased litter and fly camping being seen across our National Park more noticeably since the Covid-19 lockdowns. We know that because of this many of you are out weekly, throughout the year, helping to keep your communities clean and litter free.

However, litter isn’t just a problem in the park but across the whole county. Over the course of this year’s Great Cumbrian litter Pick 34 groups took part, with over 278 volunteers, covering 156.3km and collecting more than 256 bags of litter. These figures are still rising though as we receive more data back.  

Tidy Town Fest Barrow

For this year’s event we linked up with Travel Actively Barrow and their “Tidy Town Fest- the Big Barrow Clean Up” which is part of their Active Travel Social Prescribing Pilot. This was a brilliant festival, bringing the community together across the Barrow peninsula to create cleaner, more welcoming streets which encourage more people to walk and cycle.

Siona, Travel Actively development officer and the organiser of the Tidy Town Fest said “Behaviour change takes time, and it only works when people feel heard and involved. Litter is something residents consistently raise as a concern, so Tidy Town Fest was a way to address a shared priority and bring the community together”.

Huge congratulations to Siona for organising such an incredible event, with 494 volunteers taking part and collecting 405 bags of litter over the course of the week. Thank you for also inviting us along to help with the Litter Hitters and Beautiful Barrow litter picks.

The weather couldn’t stop us!

The weather for this year’s Great Cumbrian Litter Pick was typical for Cumbria, a- all four seasons in one day. The volunteers came out come rain or shine, in the hail, and for the Fix the Fells volunteers, the snow!

Unfortunately, litter is a continuing problem, but this event shows what an impact a community litter group can have in such a short period of time, and the 256 bags of litter collected just shows that.

Cumberland and Westmorland and Furness council also supported this year’s event by collecting the litter accumulated by many of the groups who went out. So, we thank them for their support.

If this year’s event has made you want to keep litter picking either with your local group or by setting one up yourself, then the council can help by lending equipment and collecting the litter for you. If you see any severe cases of littering, fly tipping, or fly camping then please report this to your local council as well.  

I’ll finish with another massive thank you to all the schools, businesses, local litter picking groups, and volunteers who gave up their time to help keep our communities clean this year. We will be back running our Great Cumbrian Litter Pick again next year, so we hope to see many of you again then.

Thank you!