Perth Voice Interactive

ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD Lauren Campbell has been doing her bit to clean her local park.

She reckons smokers tossing butts and coffee-sippers tossing cups are the biggest culprits.

For a school project she was asked to pick a way to help the world: she started close to home—Mount Hawthorn’s Braithwaite Park, right across the street.

“We’ve lived here my whole life and the park is a really special place, and it’s not nice to see it being misused,” the Perth College year sixer says.

On her first day, Lauren filled five bags of rubbish from the small park. When she went back this weekend she packed another three. Cigarette packets, coffee cups and loose doggy bags blowing in the wind were among the most discarded items. She’s even found bottles less than a metre from a bin.

“Lots of people don’t pick that stuff up because they think ‘gross! It’s not mine’,” she says.

Most people she’s met while out picking up rubbish have been “lovely: it’s good to know there are nice people around,” (although one time she got chatting to a couple who congratulated her on her hard work, only to leave their coffee cups behind when they left).

The assignment is due this Friday May 22, but now she’s got the clean-up bug, Lauren says she’s “going to make it an ongoing thing” and hopes her mates pick up the habit too.

by DAVID BELL