A community-spirited four-year-old is the youngest litter-picker in her village – and loves to ride around on her miniature John Deere tractor, filling the trailer with rubbish.
Jessica Rowell is passionate about keeping the sides of the road clean and tidy outside her house.
The youngster, from Murrow, Cambs., can regularly be seen with her high-vis vest on, riding her motorised truck along the grassy banks to collect rubbish.
And now, Jessica has even been welcomed as an honourary member of the Murrow Street Pride Group – who have gifted her with a child-sized litter-picker to help with her tidying efforts.
Jessica’s mum, Keleigh Fenn, 31, said: “Jessica loves litter-picking.
“She gets quite annoyed when she sees more and more litter appearing along the side of the road, and she’ll say, “Stop putting your rubbish on my grass!”.
“But she finds it quite fun to go out and tidy it all up. We thought we’d make it a bit more fun by getting her the John Deere tractor for her last birthday.
“All through the summer she would ride around in it every day, riding round our yard and along the banks of the road, filling up her trailer with rubbish.
“Her dad runs an agricultural business, so she’s a proper little country girl.
“She has John Deere overalls to match, too.”
Keleigh added: “Sometimes I’m a little bit concerned about Jessica picking up some of the stuff alongside of the road – there are a lot of empty wine bottles that get discarded.
“It’s quite shocking really, what people throw out their car windows. It’s a shame, because the first impression driving into the village is that there is litter everywhere.”
But Keleigh said that Jessica “can’t wait” to be able to go out litter-picking with the Murrow Pride Street Group, who have gifted her her own litter-picker.
She said: “She hasn’t been able to go out with them yet because of the lockdown, and she hasn’t done as much litter-picking recently because the weather has been so bad.
“But it was a really sweet little package they left on our doorstep for her.
“We’re really proud of Jessica and her attitude, she is a great example to all those adults who think it’s okay to just chuck their litter.”
And Diane Cutler, chairman of Murrow Street Pride, said: “Thank you very much Jessica for all your efforts to keep our village looking clean and tidy.
“Murrow Street Pride is proud to have you on our team and we look forward to when we can all meet as a group for organised litter picks.
“In the meantime many thanks to Jessica and all other volunteers who are litter picking individually during their exercise time.”
