Free beer was given away by London Fields Brewery and five other pubs to volunteers who helped clean up Regent’s Canal on Saturday 19 October.
The event known as ‘Love Not Waste’ started at 12 noon until 10pm. Collect a bag full of plastic from the canal and get a half-pint on the house at one of six locations in the area. Volunteers could earn 3 pints in total.
The idea came to Katie Ward, founder of the event, as she was walking to work along the Canal. She said: “I live locally and walk along the canal regularly. It’s just horrific. The river beds are not beds, they’re just beds of cans. Honestly if you walk down there, it’s horrifying.”
According to a May report from the charity, Canal and River Trust, “the majority of the litter found along and in our canals each year is plastic” and that an estimated “fourteen million items of plastic end up in our canals and rivers every year.”
They said that this has a damaging impact on marine life.
Chandru Lekraj, who runs the London Fields Brewery taproom, said he hoped the idea would spread around London.
“The main thing behind this whole event is community. If you had to put it down to one word, that is it. It is what London Fields is about, and what the whole industry is capable of doing.
“One month it could be here in Hackney, another month Camden, and the next month somewhere else. If it spreads that would be amazing.”
The participating pubs were: The Cat and Mutton, The Virgin Queen, Rosemary Branch Pub N1, The Dove, The Barge House, and the London Fields Brewery’s taproom in London Fields.
