Darren Rice goes magnet fishing to clean up waterways in Newport and the surrounding area. He is a volunteer who co-leads the Newport Canal and Litter Picking Group with Julie Elizabeth. 

The Lliswerry Pill Reen near Spytty Road is particularly bad for littering.

Locals Mike and Sandra Welch live right by the drainage ditch.

“The littering is really bad around here – I do my best to litter pick but I’m fighting a losing battle,” said Mr Welch.

Mrs Welch added: “The area has a lot of littering, it’s never tidy – there are trolleys, bikes in the water.”

(Image: Tristan Rees) Darren Rice retrieving a bike from the reen.

The Argus joined Mr Rice in cleaning up the Reen on Saturday, January 18.

On that day, the Reen had trolleys, tyres, a bike and a radiator in it.

Mr Rice said: “The problem is education, people need to understand the damage that litter like this causes to the environment that surrounds us.”

Mr Rice sells the metal that he gathers to a scrap yard and uses the money to buy food for food banks in Newport. 

In total, six trolleys were removed from the ditch – 4 were from the nearby Morrisons and 1 was not possible to identify and 2 were from Tesco.

(Image: Tristan Rees) Some of the trolleys and a bike which were pulled from the reen.

Read about Cwmbran’s problem with trolleys here: Supermarket shopping trolleys abandoned on Cwmbran streets

Mr Rice said that if the handles are still on the trolleys, it is illegal to sell them for scrap and instead they must be returned to the supermarkets. 

(Image: Tristan Rees) Darren Rice returning four trolleys to Morrisons supermarket

When the trolleys were returned to Spytty Road Tesco, Lead manager, Olivia Dunsford said: “We count our trolleys every Sunday. It’s rare, we have had 10-12 go missing.” 

Ms Dunsford said Tesco do not retrieve trolleys themselves, saying: “We have a form of third party that trolley – called TrolleyWise – that do it for us.”

They do make efforts to keep their trolleys on site by locking them up overnight. However, unlike the other Tesco stores and other supermarkets, they do not have the pound for a trolley system. The pound for a trolley ca deter people from taking them out of the shop’s vicinity because they will lose their coin.

Tesco store manager, Nadine Clarke said: “We employ someone to walk around the car park and get the shopping trolleys around – they also do a bit of litter picking.”