RESIDENTS worked until midnight to clear empty cans and bottles dumped in Leigh by “cheapskate daytrippers”.

Large amounts of rubbish were once again dumped in Leigh on Sunday with daytrippers blamed after buying booze in the old town and dumping rubbish over the seawall.

Litterers have been branded “selfish and callous” after cans were seen floating away in the water.

Furious residents were left to pick up the rubbish, with some working until midnight on Sunday.

Echo:

Leigh resident, Ron Sverdloff, 78, said: “I’m feeling really frustrated. It doesn’t need to happen.

“It’s been brilliant recently and that’s thanks to the police and marshals but suddenly they have disappeared and it’s getting bad again.

“It needs nipping in the bud. With this weather, we’re going to be inundated with Londoners.

“They buy booze from cheap supermarkets, discard their rubbish that we have to clean up or it ends up in the sea.

“At midnight we were out picking up the litter. If we don’t do it late at night the tide would have come in and taken all the rubbish before we could do it in the morning.

“We seem to have a feral society.”

Jon Fuller, of south east Essex friends of the Earth has warned marine animals will die if people aren’t more responsible with their rubbish.

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He said: “I did go to the seafront yesterday evening and there was a mass of litter.

“I would say it’s selfish and callous to leave so much plastic and other rubbish on the beach. As the tide goes in, the rubbish gets washed out into the oceans and kills marine animals.

“You would think all of the TV documentaries that David Attenborough has been made that people would be more intelligent but still so many people are not getting the message.

“People like that are going to kill marine animals and it’s so unnecessary.”

Carole Mulroney, cabinet member for the environment, said: “We’ve put in so many extra measures with Euro bins and extra collections to overcome it. We can’t have people standing down there all the time telling people to put their rubbish in the bin “It’s disappointing because we can’t do much more.

“Thank you very much to all the people that did help.”