The hardy team of 12 employees from Yell – best known for Yellow Pages, Yellow Pages 118 247 and the online search site yell.com – braved the wind and rain to clean up Kelvingrove Park on Thursday, May 24.
As one of the first businesses in Glasgow to back the City Council’s new £4m campaign, the team, whose office is based in St Vincent Street, hopes their involvement will spur other companies to do the same.
Clean Glasgow aims to instil pride in the city’s residents and businesses, and punish people who break the law by littering, fly tipping, spraying graffiti and allowing their dogs to foul streets and parks. Such careless acts cost Glasgow taxpayers a staggering £16m in unnecessary spending every year to clean up.
Campaign bosses believe stamping out such anti-social behaviour will protect Glasgow’s growing reputation as one of Europe’s most stylish and vibrant cities, and a renowned centre of excellence for both business and pleasure.
Assisted by constables Ross Gammack and David Thomson from the community safety department at Anderston Police – whose beat includes Kelvingrove Park – the yell.com workers also cleaned up the area surrounding the Kelvingrove Art Galleries and Museum. They were joined by a Clean Glasgow community team, which provided equipment including bin bags, litter pickers and gloves.
Customer operations project manager with the Yell Group, Peter Burns, who helped organise the clean up, said: “As a company, we are considerate of the interests of the communities in which we operate and encourage our people to work with them to make a positive impact.
“When we heard about Clean Glasgow we were very keen to become involved. This is the first of a number of events that we will be taking part in, in support of the campaign over the year. Today was tiring, but we all agree hugely worthwhile and we hope that this will encourage other Glasgow companies to come on board and help play their part in cleaning up their city.”
To date, Clean Glasgow has brought a great reaction from the public. In the first four months of the year-long campaign the City Council has formed partnerships with all local communities throughout Glasgow via the Clean Glasgow Neighbourhood Charter, resulting in over 1,000 volunteers taking part in more than 100 local clean ups.
Over 600 fixed penalty notices have been issued to offenders since the launch on February 19.
In addition, a Learning Communities Charter was introduced earlier this month, enlisting 80,000 school pupils into the fight and other Charters will follow targeted at the business community, major utilities companies, voluntary organisations and others. Ten new mobile CCTV vans have been introduced and 200 new bins with cigarette trays have been provided in the city centre.
Glasgow City Council leader Steven Purcell said: “We must change the mindset of the minority of people that view dropping litter, fly tipping and graffiti as acceptable and repeatedly spoil the environment for everyone else.
“Clean Glasgow is about a partnership between Glasgow City Council and the people of Glasgow – we want to encourage local people to take pride in their communities and help us to tackle this blight on the city’s streets.”
Groups or individuals who would like to get involved in community clean up events in their area are urged to call the Clean Glasgow hotline on 0800 027 7027.