We all enjoy a river or canalside walk at the weekends, but those pictures don’t look so Instagram-worthy when there is rubbish floating about in the water.
The majority of all litter found in UK rivers is plastic, according to analysis or 25 different waterway locations by Canal & River Trust and Coventry University.
Researchers found 60% of litter was made from plastic, while cans made up 13%, paper and cardboard 7% and glass 6%.
The Trust estimates that 570,000 items of plastic reach the world’s oceans each year via local waterways and is calling on people to get involved in helping to reduce the volume of waste found in our waterways by taking action on a local level
The charity is now urging communities and individuals to join its Towpath Taskforce, a local litter-picking army mobilising up and down the country from Tottenham to Wigan. To find out when the next pick is happening near you, visit the site here.
“By taking a little care of their local waterway, everyone can have beauty on their doorstep,” Peter Birch, national environmental policy advisor at Canal & River Trust, said.
“Our canals and rivers can inadvertently act as ‘plastics highways’, transporting rubbish from where we live out to sea. Not only is this a huge problem for wildlife, which can be harmed, it also detracts from these special and important wellbeing places in our towns and cities.”
Hollie Haines lives in London close to the river Thames, while her partner lives near to the river Wandle. “We both love walking and being near water but it always makes me so sad seeing how much litter there is in it,” she told HuffPost UK.
″It totally takes away from how nice it can be to sit by the water or walk by it because it’s not clean or beautiful,” she said.