Trustees
Maria Pemberton (Chair of the Trustees) is currently Director of Operations at The Directory of Social Change. Most of her working life has been spent with charities, large and small, and in many different capacities including fundraising, project management, business development and training. She also a Trustee of Childhope UK and regularly works voluntarily for The Teddington Society, a local group started by residents to protect the character of the town.
In recent years, she has found herself picking up litter in the street, especially when the refuse collectors have just been! Highly organised recycling, where every bit of rubbish has to go in a special container, seems to create more litter than before! What really makes her mad is half eaten food containers just tossed on pavements late at night coupled with the lack of rubbish bins in obvious places. The strangest piece of litter she has found was a credit card from an American Bank in one of her flowerbeds in the back garden – how it got there remains a mystery!
Kate Davies (Trustee) currently leads English Heritage’s national volunteering programme where she is dedicated to organising, supporting and championing the work of volunteers in the heritage sector. Professionally Kate’s aim is to protect and promote the historic environment by helping people to enjoy, understand, value and care for it.
Her interest in litter started whilst growing up in Wales where at primary school it was considered a privilege to be selected to pick litter around the school grounds during break time. As a child no older than ten she remembers it was second nature to everyone to be proactive litter pickers – it was fun ! Now Kate wants to encourage everyone to educate the young and involve them in keeping the community clean.
Patricia Kavanagh-Brown (Trustee) runs a chartered accountancy practice which helps companies to stay in control and achieve their future goals. She is passionate about the arts.
Patricia believes in the enormous potential within each human being which, with education, aspiration and vision, could be harnessed for so much common good. Instead of using these gifts, mankind so often perpetrates a lot of harm. Our countryside is astoundingly beautiful and our urban areas are expensively designed and maintained, so why do they end up looking like the inside of a dustbin? Patricia wants to help this to change. The most ghastly litter she has encountered was a tube train which looked like the aftermath of an alcoholic orgy: two abandoned vodka bottles swilling alcohol over food cartons, beer cans and their contents. Once a week, she picks up the contents of one neighbour’s dustbins that end up strewn over the road and front gardens. She wonders if a packaging tax, which is ring-fenced and applied solely to keep the country litter- and chewing-gum free, would help.
Christopher Bates (Trustee) enjoyed a full career in the Royal Engineers, serving in many parts of the world. On his retirement from the Army in 1999, he joined the Dulverton Trust, initially as Deputy Director, assuming the role of Director in 2003. The Trust is a grant-making foundation, supporting a large number of charities mainly in UK, but also in East Africa. He visited many hundreds of charities to assess their applications and gained a close understanding of the charitable sector. He has been a Trustee of a number of Royal Engineer charities and remains a Trustee of the Army Central Fund, as well as a corporate foundation and a charity working in the Sudan.
Christopher got to know CleanupUK because they twice succeeded in persuading the Dulverton Trustees to provide support. He has become increasingly irritated about the scourge of litter despoiling towns and countryside and has developed much personal sympathy for CleanupUK’s work, whilst observing that Regimental Sergeant Majors seem to have no difficulty in persuading ‘volunteers’ to pick up any litter which has the temerity to desecrate their barracks.
Christopher has appointed himself the unofficial litter warden of a footpath which runs past his house in Tunbridge Wells. On his regular dog walks he has removed a lot of litter – mainly fast food wrappings – but the most unusual item he has come across was a smashed-open metal cash box.
Dan Jones (Trustee) is an Assistant Director of Environment Services at the London Borough of Bromley, managing waste management, street cleansing, highways, parks and green space and town centre markets. He worked for the London Borough of Sutton from 1999 in a variety of roles from Sports Development Officer, Senior Policy Officer and Head of Street Scene before joining Bromley in 2010.
Dan studied for a BA in business studies at the seaside town of Aberystwyth and, liking it so much, he spent a further 2 years there working as an elected officer in the Student’s Union. Following his love of sport he then completed an MSc at Loughborough University before taking up his position in Sutton.
Having been brought by the seaside and in the countryside he was taught to respect the environment and put your litter in your pocket and take it home. His pet hate is people who leave their lunchtime litter on the grassed areas of parks, usually yards from a litter bin. Why ?
He is often seen picking up the odd crisp packet and drink can dropped on the street or park and putting it the nearest bin. It’s not too difficult and only takes a minute.
Dan thinks that litterers who are caught should, as a punishment, clear up litter in their local community, hopefully shaming them to never do it again.
The strangest piece of litter he has come across was a discarded Batman outfit near his home. No sign of Robin though…