Volunteers taking part in the weekend’s Oban Spring Clean filled about 220 bags with rubbish and dumped waste.
The Keep Oban Beautiful event was joined by around 70 enthusiastic volunteers getting hands-on with 24 separate litter-picking sessions, cleaning up the area’s river, verges, beaches, paths and woods.
Most of the waste was food packaging, drinks bottles and cans, dog poo bags, wet wipes and glass bottles.
The haul also included unusual finds including a doll, a carpet, a full sheet of insulation, a scooter and a couple of children’s bicycles - most of those were pulled from the Black Lynn or the burn in Dunollie Woods.
Assistance for the clean-up was willingly donated by the GRAB Trust, which will loan litter pickers to any group needing them, MKM which gave bags and gloves, and Argyll and Bute Council which agreed to collect all the stashes of waste.
KOB’s Laura Corbe, who was at the Dunollie Woods clean-up, said: “The team was brilliant and pulled out 30 sacks and various other large items from in and around the burn, including a car battery and a very large carpet.
"For the first time we saw wet wipes there, over 100 of them, which may have discharged from sewers during the October floods, and urge people to please bin them, not flush them down the toilet.
"It’s a really beautiful area that’s home to loads of wildlife and we ask your help to please keep it tidy.”
KOB chairman Maurice Wilkins added: “I’d like to thank the members and friends of KOB for their help in getting ready for the weekend, especially Claire Rizos, our main organiser.
"And of course the spring clean wouldn’t happen if it wasn’t for the willing people of Oban who gave up their weekend to join in with such enthusiasm.
"It was particularly gratifying to see young children wielding their litter pickers, encouraged by their parents. Let’s hope that as the years go by there will be less and less litter to pick up - together we can make a difference!”
New action group Our Oban was also out and about on Saturday, having its first public event, set up in Tesco car park near the spring clean’s central hub.
It was there asking the public for their opinions and ideas on how Oban can become a more sustainable town and if it was important to residents that future plans are shaped though a "green lens".
The five main topics people were asked about were: natural spaces, community gardening, flooding, moving around and public transport.
A spokesperson for Our Oban said they got "brilliant feedback" and it was "great to hear the passion with which people of all ages spoke about the future of their town".
See next week’s Oban Times to find out more about what people had to say.
"Thanks to Tesco for housing us, Argyll Coast & Countryside Trust (ACT) for supporting the event, Sorcha bakery for making it the tastiest consultation event, to the volunteers who gave their time to reach out to strangers in a car park and, most importantly, to the people who stopped and offered their thoughts and vision for the future of Our Oban," added the spokesperson.
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