“In the meantime, I have been on my way nine times where I have filled no less than 46 garbage bags. You will find the oddest stuff, lots of food, but also bottles, cans, laughing gas ampoules and lastly even a mannequin. Of course not in my garbage bag, so I contacted the DAR for that. ”
Wherever you look, you will find littering virtually anywhere on the street. A thorn in the eye of the Tally van Hues. As a Neighborhood Hero, she regularly goes out to get rid of ‘her’ streets from all that lying around. “It’s important that it happens naturally, but it’s also fun to do.”
“For two years I sighed with great regularity that there was so much waste along the street. This spring I had enough of it and in all my goodness I thought: I’ll give up.” She signed up for the national litter day on 17 March and went with four trash bags to the Van street. “So there were far too few”, laughs Tally. “We had to get a few more extras because I had seven bags full on the short distance that I had covered.”
This made Tally realize that the problem was even bigger than she thought. “I have been retiring since June and I wanted to keep moving, so I hit two birds with one stone.” As a Registered member, you keep your neighborhood cleans with other Neighborhood Heroes. When it suits you, you walk through a clearing around your neighborhood and then clean up the litter that you encounter. As a result, your neighborhood will not only look better, there will also be the less new waste on the street and in the green.
“As a Neighborhood Hero, I have adopted three streets” I regularly walk through the cleaning lane through the streets where I have been walking regularly, during these rounds I only do that with my Neighborhood Hero attributes.” Registered district heroes receive a safety vest with reflective tape, a good grab stick, special waste bags and a waste card with which they can dispose of the bags in all underground residual waste containers in the municipality.
Tally finds her ‘work’ not only very important to do, but also very nice and you see immediate results. “It’s great to be out and about, so I always try to walk around so that people can see my jacket properly, because on the back there is sign logo which made by reflective heat transfer vinyl, so I hope to create more awareness because that’s what I think is the first step.”