Keep Oxford beautiful: ODS to support OxClean’s annual city-wide Spring Clean

There’s nothing worse than walking around the historic and beautiful city of Oxford to be confronted by litter blowing in the wind. 

Oxford Direct Services (ODS) is actively supporting the Oxford Civic Society’s OxClean annual Spring Clean - a flagship community event where volunteers come out in force with their rubber gloves to help tidy up rubbish.  This year’s event will be held on March 1, 2 and 3, 2019 throughout the city.   

OxClean is an initiative dedicated to keeping Oxford clean all year round and make it a welcoming and pleasant place for people to live, work, relax and visit.  A wide variety of local groups take part – residents’ and allotment associations, cyclists, schools, restaurants, colleges, sports clubs, local businesses and so on – volunteers who each give up two hours of their time to tackle litter across the city’s streets, public spaces and ‘grot spots’.  It is hoped that around 1,000 people will get involved this year. 

ODS staff along with four 3.5-ton caged tipper lorries are being made available to collect rubbish from volunteers at the roadside.  Based on its involvement over the past decade, ODS expects to remove over four tons of both residual and recyclable waste.

Vernon Porter from the Oxford Civic Society explains, “The Spring Clean is an important part of our campaign to continually improve Oxford.  We rid the city of a great deal of rubbish that accumulates over the course of the year and encourage civic pride and responsibility at a grass roots level – hopefully fostering a change in people’s behaviour and therefore reducing the litter problem over time.”

Adrian Moss, ODS’ streetscenes operations manager, says, “We’re a key partner working with the Oxford Civic Society to make the OxClean Spring Clean a big success.  Ultimately our raison d’etre is the same as their’s – to make Oxford a lovely place to spend time in.  And that means creating a rubbish free environment. ”

This week sees the formal launch of this year’s annual OxClean Spring Clean. A brief ceremony will be held at the Co-operative Food supermarket in Summertown, 228-240 Bath Road, Oxford at 2pm on February 20, 2019 aimed at publicising and encouraging people to take part. 

To take part in the Ox Clean Spring Clean, please visit https://www.oxclean.org.uk/