Keep Britain Tidy is a British campaign run by the Keep Britain Tidy environmental charity,[1] which is part funded by the UK government. The majority of their campaigning is around the issue of litter. They have been using "Keep Britain Tidy" as their slogan for almost fifty years. They describe their mission as being "To create effective action by our targeted groups to achieve a sustained improvement in local environmental quality and reduce anti-social behaviour". The organisation is head quartered in Wigan, Lancashire.[2]
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Keep Britain Tidy was originally set up by a conference of 26 organisations in 1955. The conference was initiated by the British Women's Institute after a resolution was passed at their 1954 AGM to start a national anti-litter campaign.[3]
In 1984, Keep Britain Tidy became a limited company and three years later they became the Tidy Britain Group.
In 2001, they had another name change – this time they became ENCAMS — short for Environmental Campaigns. The new name reflected how they had moved on from just dealing with litter. They were now concerned with beach awards and Eco-Schools.
By 2005, the ENCAMS regions dissolved and they started to concentrate their work solely in England.
On 1 June 2009 they changed their name back to Keep Britain Tidy and introduced a new logo highlighting the IT within BRITAIN, reading Keep It Tidy as well as Keep Britain Tidy. The tidyman logo is still used in public campaigns, alongside campaign straplines such as "Let's keep it tidy!" and "Help keep it tidy!"[4]
Keep Britain Tidy runs the Eco-Schools programme and the Blue Flag beach campaign in England. Keep Britain Tidy also ran the Keep Scotland Beautiful, Keep Wales Tidy and TIDY Northern Ireland campaigns until April 2005, at which point these became the responsibility of their respective devolved organisations.The Eco-Schools and Blue Flag programmes in Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland are now run independently by these devolved organisations. The organisation is one of the partners supporting The Big Tree Plant, launched in December 2010. Keep Britain Tidy is currently running the Clever Bins study with local authority partners across the UK. This study will run throughout 2011.