Stop The Drop Campaign

CPRE’s Stop the Drop campaign tackles the litter and fly-tipping problem that is despoiling our beautiful countryside. It’s headed by CPRE president and author Bill Bryson, a passionate anti-litter campaigner and champion of the countryside.

At a local level, supporters of the campaign can get involved by organising their own litter pick or joining a local litter volunteer group through litteraction.org.uk. Supporters can pledge to Stop the Drop, joining CPRE in lobbying local authorities, government and other bodies legally responsible for keeping land litter-free. Through these various campaigning actions CPRE aim to demonstrate to Government and other authorities the strength of support behind Stop the Drop.

Read more about the campaign here, including notes from CPRE President Bill Bryson

How to obtain funding for your group 

You may feel that your group doesn’t need any funding, but it can be useful to have your own equipment. It may be risky relying on borrowing equipment from the local council, especially if there are other groups after it at the same time

We suggest that you approach the contact at your local council in the first instance – they may know of some good sources of funding and the council itself might even have the facility to give you a small grant to buy equipment and/or insurance

Ask your local library to help you research what environmental grants there are available locally – they might have a grant-search database that you can use. There are a number of possible national sources of funding for volunteer groups. Here is a selection:

  1. BBC’s Breathing Places
  2. Awards For All
  3. Biffaward
  4. UKFundraising often has good fundraising ideas

Approaching any businesses that are local to you can be a good source of funding. If it’s a smaller business, approaching the owner may be the best plan. For larger businesses, find out who in the business deals with community relations or “CSR” (corporate social responsibility). Arrange to meet this person – they may have some funding specially set aside for community projects and may be keen to issue a joint press release with you to publicise their grant to you. You might even find that they will happily encourage their staff to join you on a litter-pick too

Ask local businesses to sponsor your group e.g. £x for each sack of litter collected

You can also try the variety of fundraising activities that many communities organise – a barbecue, a bring and buy sale, a raffle or a sponsored litter-pick