A 100-STRONG army of volunteers who turned out to help clear the streets of Bridport of litter found that flytipping is blighting the town.

While it was noted there was less general rubbish around, the clean-up crew came across larger dumped items and flytipped garden waste including poisons.

The second From Street to Sea litter pick took place on Sunday, October 17, with Bridport's Litter Free Street Champions out on the streets, green spaces, river banks and beaches to help clean up.

Whilst the street champions were busy picking up rubbish on their own streets, other residents were gathering at the Co-op, Morrisons, the West Bay Discovery Centre and on East Beach to remove litter from the areas.

Amongst the items removed were six car tyres, an HGV truck wheel arch, a large compost bin and a shopping trolley full of glass bottles, along with soiled nappies and bags of dog poo.

Mayor of Bridport Councillor Ian Bark, who organised the event, said that whilst the litter levels in general appeared to have dropped since the first From Street to Sea clean up, people dumping larger items is becoming the bigger problem.

He said: "Litter is one thing but fly tipping moves the casual dropping of waste to a completely higher level. The tyres for example were all dumped in the hedge behind Morrisons' small car park.

"Another person or persons has been using the same car park to dump several large bags of garden waste such as weeds, dead plants, and hedge and tree trimmings all mixed up with empty compost bags and part used plastic bottles of slug and bug poisons.

"Not only is this unnecessary and unsightly, the dumping of poisons is particularly anti-social, and also potentially extremely harmful to wildlife and the environment."

He added: "Fly-tipping is becoming a bigger problem, people are just dumping their waste, when we have facilities to deal with that. There were much less bottles, cans and crisp packets which was a good sign, Morrisons is also doing more to deal with the general litter situation."

Cllr Bark recently celebrated Bridport achieving the status of a Plastic Free Community, having met the criteria set by Surfers Against Sewage for a town of its size.

The focus of the campaign is to reduce and eliminate single-use plastics where possible and the Plastic Free Bridport team have working hard with community groups and businesses to achieve this status.