Captain Morgan Original Spiced Gold (mixed with Pepsi Max), Stella Artois, Black Premium Cider, Heineken Pure Malt Lager, Tennant’s Super, Foster’s Australian Lager Beer, Kronenbourg 1664 Bierre Blond, and Mango and Peach Smirnoff Crush. Plus Red Bull energy drink, Lucozade Energy and Coca Cola.
This is a selection of just some of the discarded cans that I collected on Saturday, whilst participating in the community litter pick organised by St Dennis Parish Council. I also collected plenty of food containers, plastic bottles, polystyrene and bits of car – as well as an electric drill with an attached electric cable and one pair of sunglasses!
There is something quite rewarding in going out with a couple of black bags and clearing rubbish in the countryside. But it is also ever so frustrating. Each time that I help out with the St Dennis litter pick, I always do the same section of the parish on the outskirts of the village. It is an understatement to say that having to collect “new” rubbish, from areas cleared only months before, is disappointing. I recall a previous community litter pick involving families, and hearing from parents about the frustration of their children seeing cardboard and other rubbish left on the very grass verges they had tidied up only days before.
Littering is such an ongoing problem, particularly along busy roads, and it is telling that discarded materials are so much less prominent along rural footpaths, for example. And what I am increasingly concerned about is how, when roadside verges are cut, rubbish inevitably gets shredded into smaller and smaller pieces, much of it not biodegradable. It is an obvious thing to say, but this makes it harder to remove from the local environment and has implications to wildlife.
I don’t know what the answer is and I don’t know how we can stop people from littering in this way. But I want to end on a positive. Last Thursday morning, I visited a site in mid Cornwall, where a large number of people has congregated on the previous evening to watch the eclipse and there was no rubbish left behind at all. Not even a single crisp packet!
Article published in the Cornish Guardian (19th August 2026) and West Briton newspapers (20th August 2026)