Wandle clean up clears two tonnes of rubbish (From Your Local Guardian)

Wandle clean up clears two tonnes of rubbish

7:30am Friday 27th January 2012 in Top Stories

Fifteen tyres, fourteen shopping trolleys, three carpets and two tonnes of unidentified rubbish are the latest items to have been pulled out of the River Wandle.

The clean up took place on the second weekend of the New Year when more than 40 volunteers braved the cold water to help clean up the river.

Despite being cleaned 11 months earlier the river still contained all sorts of detritus with some of the more bizarre discoveries including a coconut, a 1980s hi-fi, a wheelbarrow and a car clamp.

Erica Evans, of the Wandle Trust, said: "It wasn’t long before the first of 14 shopping trolleys was identified, dug out and hauled from the water.

"All were deeply sunk in the river bed, so they’d clearly been there for years, and it took a lot of hard work with crow bars and shovels to release them from the silty depths."