National land management charity, the Land Trust, is calling on its visitors to use their parks and green spaces responsibly after a significant rise in issues with litter over recent months.

The Trust, which manages over 80 parks and green spaces across the UK, kept its sites open throughout the period of lockdown to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, and has experienced a huge increase in visitor numbers to many of its spaces over the past 6 months.

However as the Trust’s Director of Portfolio Management Alan Carter explains, this rise in popularity has brought its own challenges:

“Through lockdown we took the decision to keep as many of our parks and green spaces open as we could to ensure that our communities could continue to enjoy the physical and mental wellbeing benefits that spending time in well managed green spaces can bring.

“We were delighted to see thousands of people using our sites during this time and were really pleased to see many new faces getting outdoors and staying active, and it’s been obvious to see how much people have appreciated being able to use our spaces during this time.

“However it hasn’t come without its challenges and unfortunately there has been a significant increase in the amount of litter we are seeing on many of our parks and green spaces. While this is sadly inevitable to some extent it is also completely avoidable and we are urging all visitors to please take their litter home with them.

“While we have increased our bin emptying regime on many of our worst affected sites this comes with a cost implication. Tidying some of our spaces is also taking up valuable ranger time which could be better used delivering volunteering, health or educational activities which would provide a much greater benefit to the wider community.

“If you are using one of our sites and the bin is full, please don’t leave your rubbish on the bin or around it. Please take it home with you and help keep our green spaces, pleasant, safe and welcoming places for people and wildlife to enjoy.”