Residents in the Calstock parish are taking matters into their own hands to deal with incidents of littering they say are occurring with increased fequency.

In a bid to fight littering, many individual residents across the parish are now conducting their own litter picking missions on a regular basis. They are then taking to community groups on social media to share their efforts with other local residents and make a plea with whoever is responsible to stop.

One affected Calstock resident - Mark Gorman — is now clearing up litter in the lanes surrounding his home on a near-weekly basis. After his most recent clean up exercise on Saturday, he shared pictures of his findings — including a used syringe and electronic devices —on Facebook, labelling these dumping actions as ‘utterly thoughtless’.

Mark, who often cleans affected stretches of road with his wife when walking their dogs, believes the syringe he found was not being used for medicinal purposes. He said: ‘With the syringe were a couple of broken ‘water for injection’ vials. People who need to inject themselves with medication would be unlikely to do it out on the road and even then, they’d be sensible enough to dispose of this properly. How irresponsible does someone have to be to leave something like that laying around? Just imagine if a child had found it. Luckily we were in possession of medical gloves; we sent it off to the health centre for disposal.’

Mark further urged people to be careful and expressed his frustration at how often he is observing littering occur in the northern parts of the village where he lives near St. Andrew’s Church, noting the contrast between when he first moved to the area in 1996.

He added: ‘I’ve been here for the best part of 30 years, it’s become more of a problem as time’s gone on, especially in the last year or two. Now it’s everywhere. It just takes two days and glass and plastic bottles, cans, plastic food containers, wet wipes and fast food wrappings are back — as soon as you clear it up it returns. An aluminium can takes 200 years to biodegrade. My wife and I know of a lady who lives slightly down the hill from us who we see litter picking too. I think its’s both some people’s laziness (on foot and in cars) and a lack of bins in the area, I only know of one in the churchyard. It’s even worse down in the village on the playing field by the qauy with broken glass and other bits.’

Another affected resident, Emma Rogers (pictured on page 1), who lives on Calstock Road near the Rising Sun pub in Gunnislake, also partook in a litter picking stint of her own on Saturday, sharing her findings on the Calstock Community Forum Facebook group. After clearing sections of the road her house is based on, Emma bagged a varied assortment of different items, including watercolour paints, used coffee cups, empty alcohol and soft drinks cans, several confectionery wrappers and a deflated helium balloon sporting Italian writing — the latter of which had blown into her garden.

Emma said: ‘I find I’m picking up litter at least once a week now and I’m really concerned about the effect it could have on wildlife. I fear it’ll get worse when the kids go back to school as Calstock Road is a route home for some people. There aren’t many bins around unless you’re down in the village; we’d benefit from some more up here. Even signs just warning people not to would help — we have them for dog fouling but not littering. There aren’t any local litterpicking groups in Gunnislake or Calstock, I did look online but posts about any similar initiative were from years ago.’

Calstock parish councillor Sophie Westwood said: ‘This is a parish-wide issue, especially on the playing field, which has been discussed at committee meetings in the last year but unfortunately it’s a situation which doesn’t have an easy solution. Those wishing to speak to the parish council about this should do so by contacting the clerk through our website.’