 Snowdon is being targeted by the Keep Wales Tidy campaign |
A group of 25 school children have taken up the challenge of cleaning up Snowdon. Pupils from Dolbadarn Primary School in Gwynedd were transported up the mountain in the snow on steam trains run by the Snowdon Mountain Railway.
The event was among 900 around Wales for Tidy Wales Week organised by the campaign group Keep Wales Tidy.
Volunteers were also helping remove an estimated 90 trolleys from the river Rhondda at Porth, south Wales.
Wynne Williams, from Keep Wales Tidy, said Snowdon had been targeted because it brought in so many visitors to the country.
"As one of the country's biggest attractions, Snowdon was chosen as a good place to highlight the issue of tidiness."
In actual fact, said Mr Williams, the children had not encountered too much litter on their tidy-up. However, the event was about raising awareness over the problem of litter in general.
"We need to restore that sense of pride in the community that we used to have," he said.
"I think we're getting a bit selfish as a people. People are obviously concerned about their own little homes but I think we need to look beyond our houses nowadays and have a sense of pride in the actual community we live in."
Rolant Wynne, head teacher at Dolbadarn school, said the pupils had been much looking forward to the exercise.
"Children at that age are very aware of environmental issues, and they are very keen to keep the area tidy," he said.
Vince Hughes from Snowdon Mountain Railway which transported the children up the mountain for the tidy-up, said he was aware that visitors did discard litter "in certain circumstances".
"What we have tried to introduce at our station are methods of compacting and recycling so that we can, as a business, look after our own litter as best as possible".
Jonathan Jones, the chief executive at the Wales Tourist Board, said that everyone in Wales had a stake in keeping the country tidy.
"Our natural environment is one of our greatest assets in the highly-competitive world of tourism," he said.
"The people involved in this campaign are setting a fine example to their fellows and demonstrating the sort of commitment to their community that we would like to see adopted across Wales."
The stretch of river being tackled at Porth is one of the most trolley-littered in Wales.
Careless shoppers and reckless vandals abandon an estimated 100,000 shopping trolleys, costing on average �80 each, every year in Wales.
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We need to restore that sense of pride in the community that we used to have
