Cookham boys raise £1300 in nine-hour charity litter pick for Earth Day

Six Cookham students donned fancy dress for an ambitious Earth Day litter pick and have raised more than £1,000 for a wildlife charity.

The Year 6 boys from Holy Trinity Primary School chose to raise money for the WWF by walking along the river from Cookham to Henley and collecting rubbish as they went.

Ben Brittain, Monty Garrett, Rafferty King, Rory Macmillan, Fred Mellors and Drake Powell completed the challenge on Saturday after walking for a total of nine hours.

They started the walk from the Cookham Moor car park and, in the end, the six boys had collected 13 bags of litter and made some unusual finds including a toilet seat, a truck tyre, paint pots, shoes and a pillow.

This initiative was thought up by the boys only a few weeks ago as they independently planned the route and set up a sponsorship page for their charity.

They also collected donations in buckets at the school gate at the end of the day and the total the youngsters have raised for the WWF currently stands at more than £1,350.

Headteacher Anna Smith said: “I am incredibly proud of the boys who came up with this idea and were driven to seeing it through and ensuring its success.

“The amount they have raised in sponsorship is incredible and their actions have really highlighted to the rest of our school community how important it is to protect our world and be climate conscious.

“Our school eco-council do an excellent job, on a day-to-day basis, in steering us towards being environmentally friendly and by promoting events like Earth Day, which we marked on April 22, we keep the importance of looking after our world in the forefront of everyone’s minds.”

On the day, the boys wore various fancy-dress outfits to represent their charity and pay homage to Earth Day, including an inflatable shark outfit, tiger onesies, a panda and outfits depicting game wardens.

Talking about why he took part, Eco council representative Rafferty said he ‘needed to do something practical to show my support for our environment’.

Fred said: “At the end of the walk we were all very tired. We lay down in the middle of Henley town centre, exhausted but proud of what we had achieved.”

Monty added: “I was very surprised by the litter we found along the river. It shocked me. Being an animal lover, I feel very ashamed that we're not respecting our wildlife. We have to work together to sort out this problem.”

Drake said his peers often engage in litter picks during school lunchtimes and mentioned the Holy Trinity's Green Flag Award and the school’s ‘important’ wildlife area for wildlife to be left undisturbed.

Rory said it was ‘important’ for Earth Day to be recognised every year and ‘remind us of the need to look after our world and do practical things to help’.