Christmas donation containers on campus filled with rubbish

A container in the SU, intended for Christmas gift donations, has instead been filled with rubbish by mistaken students.

An outraged student, Madeline Tredgett, posted a picture of the donation bin in the Arts Building on the "Overheard at Royal Holloway" Facebook page. It shows the container overflowing and filled with empty coffee cups, plastic bottles, and other rubbish.

Madeline then spent 20 minutes emptying and cleaning the bin and made a sign reading 'THIS IS NOT A BIN' to prevent people from throwing rubbish in the donation container again.

The bin yesterday filled with rubbish

Madeline told the Royal Holloway Tab: 'It was a bit frustrating because I think some people did know what they were doing.

It may have been one or two people who didn't realise it was a bin, but I don't believe that every single person didn't realise and probably just thought because other people had done it, they might as well. To top it off there was a bin about five metres away.'

In preparation for Christmas, "Santa's Workshop", a student-led volunteering project partnered with Age UK Surrey, is organised on campus in order to donate Christmas presents to the elderly. Collection points wrapped in Christmas wrapping paper were set up across campus for people to donate presents.

Eleanor Dunn, one of the organisers of "Santa's Workshop", told The Tab Royal Holloway: 'The team and I are really excited about this volunteering project, last year they were used as bins a lot so we decided we'd remove the lids this year and see if that made a difference.

Unfortunately, this has not happened, so all we can really rely on are the wonderful people on campus who go out of their way to clean up and empty them. We just hope that someone doesn't drop their half drunk coffee in there one day when someone's put a donation in there and it gets ruined'