Cool gets knickers in a twist | Wairarapa News | Local News in Wairarapa

They're back, and this time it's personal.

The Collect Our Own Litter (Cool) ladies, Phillipa Arapoff and Felicity Warren, have already found one item of an intimate nature in their drive to rid the region's roads of rubbish - a pair of women's underwear.

The women found the smalls with other junk on Saturday at a roadside photoshoot, held to launch a repeat of their successful 2008 Cool project. They also found bottles, cans, pie wrappers and yoghurt pottles, all within metres of a Carterton rural intersection.

Cool involves rural residents cleaning up the roadsides alongside their properties, up to halfway to neighbours' houses in each direction.

In 2008 the women designed a logo, arranged campaign posters and sought help from councils and businesses to deliver clean-up kits containing plastic bags and gloves to every country letterbox.

It worked so well Wairarapa country folk collected 9cu m of rubbish, and Mrs Warren calculated around 30 per cent of rural households were involved in the big day, November 23.

This year the event will be held on Sunday, September 19.

In the lead-up to the clean-up, Mrs Arapoff and Mrs Warren will again visit schools around Wairarapa, talking to children about the event and the mess made by people who throw rubbish out car windows.

Some of the more unusual items picked up in 2008 included a car bonnet, a working cellphone, undersize paua shells and a pair of men's underwear.