Bath rowers make plea as branches 'covered in plastic'

Rowers are pleading with the public to stop flushing hygiene products after huge volumes of litter washed into the River Avon during January's floods.

They have been out litter-picking every day for weeks to try and clear the area of sanitary waste.

One rower said he had seen branches "totally covered in plastic" as volunteers used rakes to retrieve potentially hazardous rubbish.

Water companies must also keep sewage out of the water, rowers say.

Vice-captain of The Minerva Bath Road Rowing Club Ian Burdiss said: "The state of the river is as bad as I have ever seen it and I have been rowing for 40 years, 30 of them in Bath.

"We have floods regularly and I have never seen this amount of rubbish brought down with the water, the actual branches have been totally covered in plastic."

Jules Taylor, one of the rowers who has joined the clean up effort, said: "The rubbish just makes rowing really unpleasant, we are quite low in the water and you can smell it and things get in your oars as well."

She added: "It's not great, there's a lot of wildlife out here, we see otters, we see birds, there's a lot of fish.

"The plastic in the river is really not going to be good for the wildlife at all."

Byron Baker-Brown, who owns Channel Kayaks, saw his business premises completely carpeted in debris following the floods.

He said the local community had been hiring kayaks just to help with the clean-up effort.

"When you look at it today it doesn't look too bad, that's because of the efforts of a lot of people," he said.

"We've been doing this for a couple of weeks now, clearing, and there's quite a few weeks left to do. It is going to take a long time," he added.

Mr Baker-Brown said litter pickers were being encouraged to wear personal protective equipment such as face masks because of the potentially toxic material they were collecting.

"Individuals need to take more responsibility for what they are sending down toilets," he said.

"I think the companies that are managing that waste need to look very closely at what they are allowing into the rivers," he added.

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