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Tralee Tidy Towns and Kerry Group staff team up for River Lee Walk clean

Colm Walsh (local authority waters program), Tommy Keane (Tralee Tidy Towns), Martha Farrell (Tralee Tidy Towns), Niamh Kelly (Kerry Group), Mary O’Sullivan, Mairead Donovan, Tracey Quill, Leah Clarke, Rian Scully, Mary Buckley, Neill Kavanagh, Mark Mulroney Padraig Torbet and Sean Duggan (All from Kerry Group) at Kerry Group HQ for the Tralee Tidy Towns River Lee Clean up on Tuesday afternoon- Photo by Mark O’Sullivan

Fergus Dennehy
© Kerryman

Tralee Tidy Towns were out again this week with staff from the Kerry Group head office as they all took part in a clean up of the River Lee walk as part of the an Taisce National Spring Clean.

Before this, Tralee Tidy Towns had undertaken large scale clean ups along the river bank on three separate occasions since February and had already removed 40 bags of litter.

The Kerry Group staff were volunteering as part of the Kerry Group MyCommunity programme which has a number of elements that encourage and empower Kerry Group employees to work with and support the communities that they work and live in across the world.

Together, Kerry Group staff and Tralee Tidy Towns members removed 19 bags of litter from the banks of the River Lee – including a large number of bottles, cans and household waste which was dumped in this environmentally sensitive area.

“We’re really heartened by Kerry Group staff coming out with us today for our National Spring Clean event – despite the rain. We really need this support. The litter picks that have been held along the River Lee walk were started by one of our own members, Tommy Keane, and they have been an eye opener for us all,” said Brendan O’Brien, Tralee Tidy Towns Chair.

“We started this work last February. The Friends of Able Tralee Tidy Towns CE Scheme and Kerry County Council TMD have also been working to keep this area litter-free for years. We removed a huge number of cans and bottles from the banks of the River Lee today and these would be taken out to Tralee Bay in river floods if we hadn’t removed them,” he continued.

Leah Clarke, Financial Control Graduate with Kerry Group had this say:

“It was a great opportunity for our organisation to help support the local community and to help contribute to the National Spring Clean initiative. A special thanks to Tralee Tidy Towns for helping us to organise the event.”