The litter-picking groups helping to keep Birmingham clean
As the bin strike continues, community organisations that have been tackling the city’s flytipping problem for years are stepping in to help
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On a balmy spring Wednesday afternoon in Birmingham, Dr Zein Hud from the Darul Qurra and Islamic Research Centre and mosque in Sparkhill grabs his litter picker, takes a deep breath and heads out to the streets.
He describes the stench of rotting fruit and vegetables from leaking bin bags that have been left out for days or even weeks and rats the size of cats, scurrying between the mountains of waste.
Birmingham’s bin workers are now in their fifth week of indefinite strikes over a long-running wage dispute, sparked by the council’s January announcement that it will scrap waste collection and recycling officer roles. The decision could lead to pay cuts of up to £8,000 a year for 150 workers, according to the union Unite.
As much as 17,000 tonnes of rubbish has since piled up on the streets, while Birmingham City Council has declared a major incident over public health concerns. Despite the reduction in services, last month the city council confirmed that council tax will rise by 7.5% in 2025 following a 10% hike the previous year. In 2023 the council effectively declared itself bankrupt.
Amid the chaos, grassroots litter-picking groups have stepped up to collect the rubbish spilling out from broken bin bags.
Hud was out every day during the month of Ramadan with a group of eight to 10 volunteers from the mosque. “It was pretty bad,” he says. “When rubbish bags are first placed out on the street, they’re not ripped or anything. But give it a couple of days and you’ll see bags that are torn up — possibly by rats, cats or other animals, or even just by people walking by and accidentally kicking them.
“They rip open and then you have litter just drifting out onto the roads, onto the pavements, into the parks, and then it gets blown with the wind and piles up.”
Dressed in hi-vis jackets and carrying blue bags and handheld litter pickers, volunteers from the mosque have been working alongside a grassroots community group to tackle the worst-hit areas.
Sparkhill Litter Busters was founded in 2021 by local residents who wanted to clean up the streets of their neighbourhood, an area of Birmingham that for years has seen high levels of flytipping. The group’s chair, Abdul Khan, says they built momentum quickly.
“We started as a WhatsApp group, then went on to Facebook pages and organically grew over the years. We have about 60-70 volunteers and we deal with local litter, so that could be outside your doorstep on your road, or adopting a road and working with other neighbours,” he says.
“People are obviously worried and frustrated because their bins haven’t been collected, but as a community, we’re just trying to tackle it in a positive way.”
About 10 minutes’ drive from Sparkhill, in Hall Green North, the Friends of Reddings Lane Park group is also rallying to address the growing waste problem in their area. Set up in 2021 to deal with issues such as community safety, conservation and flytipping, the group is calling for volunteers to help during the strike.
Each week around a dozen people come together to wade through areas filled with discarded items. They then work with the council’s street cleaning team and have their blue bags collected, either by leaving them next to local authority-owned bins or by collection trucks.
“We’re trying to encourage people to look after their community, even if it’s just at the front of their door,” says Farina Ahmed, the group’s chair. “Before the strike, there’d be more casual litter picking or fixed community days where we litter pick. We have a ‘grot spot’ list and we pull people together.”
The bin strike has sparked conversations about why some people might be reluctant to get involved in community clean-up groups, she says.
“I’m not sure where it comes from but there’s this belief that you are ‘less than’ if you pick up litter. Then there are people who just don’t want to get dirty — it’s just too filthy, they can’t cope with the smells,” she says. “Between the litter groups we all have this saying: ‘There must be something wrong with us.’”
Amer Khan, community and campaign project director at Narthex, a Birmingham-based charity working to break cycles of poverty, believes there’s more responsibility growing among locals now to look after their communities and refrain from flytipping and dropping litter. In March, 30 volunteers turned up to the group’s inaugural litter-picking meeting in Sparkhill, which Khan hopes will be the first of many more, even after the bin strike ends.
“Volunteers are coming together to say: ‘We really need to change this’. Families are coming out, there are mothers and women coming out from mosque groups, bringing their little children. We’ve also got young people getting involved,” he says.
Unite has warned that Birmingham’s bin strike could stretch into the summer and Ahmed is concerned about the council’s capacity to deal with its waste crisis. “They’re just not doing the job,” she says.
Still, the city’s litter-picking groups are trying to stay positive.
“It’s quite uplifting,” says Hud. “As Muslims, we know that in the Qur’an, the sky, the earth and the environment, all of it — it’s been described as signs of Allah. So we were actually proud and grateful that we’ve had the opportunity to clean the signs of Allah.”
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