A HUGE pile of black bags stuffed with litter appeared outside The Harbour Project at St Luke’s Church after a community litter pick.

Volunteers and users at the charity joined with people from the neighbourhood to clear the Broadgreen area of cigarette butts, sweet wrappers and bottle tops.

Chief executive Clair Garrett said: "We have a mountain of black bags outside. It’s successful in that lots of our visitors here have wanted to get involved.

“This has been their idea, it’s not something we force people to do but people have seen what we’ve been doing today and want to get involved.

“A number of local residents have got involved because a number of those have told us they’ve been frustrated with the amount of litter in their neighbourhood and they want to clean it up.

“It’s been a great community effort of the staff, volunteers and local community coming together and making this area somewhere where we’re proud to be.

“The more litter there is, the less pride people take in their environment so if we can clean it up then we all think let’s keep it that way.”

She said: “We separated it out into zones and had four different teams so they could go to different areas and hopefully we can cover as much as we can.”

Amongst those taking part was near neighbour Fisao,who did not want to give his full name. He said: “I’m living around the area and it’s my home, so I would like to see my home clean.

“People need to be more considerate about what they’re throwing out. You need to find the right place to dispose of it and not just throw it on the street, there are other people on the street and it’s nice to see the neighbourhoods clean and tidy.

“If people think more about it and if everyone encourages each other about it then everything will be much better.

John Pryce, 79, lives in Broadgreen. He donned gloves and a florescent waistcoat to take part in the clean up.

He told the Adver: “Today was very well organised, well led and there was lots of people so I think we’ve made quite a big difference to the area.

“I live a five-minute walk away and the rising tide of garbage is engulfing the whole of the area. It’s difficult to know what to do about it.”

Another volunteer, Ayalae, 40, added: “Me and a group of friends were just coming along to keep the town clean. We live in this area and we’re proud to keep it clean because it’s very important for the environment and the people who are living here.”