Category Archives: River Rhymney (Lamby Way)

Event 164: River Rhymney at Lamby Way – The Return! (22 April 2018)

55 enthusiastic volunteers enjoyed the spring sunshine on 22 April — Earth Day 2018 — as they returned to the River Rhymney to remove plastics and other waste from its banks. And it was lovely to see lots of new faces yet again!

CRG volunteers hard at work at Lamby Way
The volunteers spent 2 hours collecting 1.5 tonnes of waste, plus 30 bags of marine plastic.

What made it much more tricky were the thousands of pieces of polystyrene that littered the entire area. Volunteers had to sit down to painstakingly pick up each piece individually!

Volunteers picking up polystyrene

They collected the usual array of plastic, plus tyres, numerous footballs, a shop chiller cabinet, various gas bottles, traffic cones, wooden panels and even a seesaw! We also found nurdles (lentil-sized pieces of plastic that are used to make larger plastic products) amongst it all.

We were delighted to see lots of native wildlife, including a little water vole who came out to say hello!

Water vole
Louise Tambini, group member said,

“Today I was delighted to see my first water vole in the wild. It was a great reminder why it is so important to keep our green spaces litter-free.”

Committee member, Dave King said,

“Inspiring to see over 50 people, particularly our younger volunteers, giving up their Sunday morning to make such a huge difference to the riverbank. By removing such a large amount of waste, and so many small pieces of polystyrene, we know that we prevented this plastic from getting into the sea and therefore into the marine food chain. Everyone who took part should be very proud of themselves!”

All waste was collected by Cardiff Council. And the marine plastic will be recycled by Terracycle, as part of their Beach Plastic Recycling Programme.

Lots more photos can be seen on our Flickr page.

And there’s a time-lapse video of all the volunteers making a huge difference.

It was a great morning’s work — many thanks to everyone who helped out!

CRG makes the news! ‘Largest’ plastics haul in Cardiff river bank clean-up

Following its epic clean-up of the River Rhymney at Lamby Way last Saturday (31 March), Cardiff Rivers Group has been hitting the headlines.

Firstly, there was an article on the BBC News website yesterday (2 April)…

Article about Cardiff Rivers Group on BBC News

… and CRG founder-member Louise Tambini was interviewed on BBC Radio Wales’s Good Evening Wales programme today. (The interview begins at 1:50:15 and the programme will be available on the Radio Wales website until 2 May, 2018.)