The sun was shining and our debris team at Scuba Leeds decided it was too nice to stay indoors. So we headed off down to our local canal to complete a canal clean up.

Our local canal behind our dive centre feeds directly into the River Aire, which then flows directly into the Irish Sea and the North sea. Even if we can't find the time mid-week to dive in the sea to clear up debris, we can still do our bit from inland!

We are passionate about looking after our environment whenever we can, above and below the water. It was great to see that the issue of debris is also a concern for non divers and even the little ones are wanting to take a stand against litter.

So with our small army of volunteers we strolled down to the canal to pick up every bit of trash we could reach, and had already filled half a bag up of litter up just on the short walk to the canal (the litter pickers we had really came in handy). 

During our hour walk along the canal we picked up over 5 bags worth of rubbish, including removing a tyre from the canal itself. We collected the usual suspects of tin cans, plastic bottles, 6 pack holders, cig butts, food wrappers, coffee cups, glass bottles, fishing wire, take away containers and some not so usual items (a bra and a sleeping bag....). 

It was a beautiful summers evening and it was a pleasure to be out with the team doing our bit for the environment. However it was even nicer meeting new folk and seeing the enthusiasm from the little ones, they were determined to collect every little thing we could see and were the true heroes of the evening. A huge thank you to our newest and smallest volunteers. 

As always on our canal clean ups we were approached by members of the public to say thank you to us for picking up litter - it’s not why we do it, but it is lovely to know our efforts are appreciated. Hopefully we inspire even more people to finally say "no" to debris and take an active approach to the issue. 

We finished the clean up feeling very proud of ourselves, and could see the visible difference our efforts have made. Back at the dive centre the first question everyone had was "when can we do this again?!?". It’s great to see that the Debris Fever our team have at the dive centre is now spreading, and that hopefully we have another set of helpers now hooked.

We have another Canal Clean up planned in for the 28th August 2019 at Scuba Leeds and hope to see even more people there. If you would like to join us (everyone is welcome) please visit https://en-gb.facebook.com/scubaleeds/ for more details.