On Friday morning, I donned my third-best clothes and a hi-vis jacket to join a crew of volunteers for an hour’s litter-picking in the area surrounding busy Tregolls Road.

This was the eighth City Clean Up, organised jointly by Truro and Newham Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) to encourage businesses to spend an hour tidying up the city.

The Alverton hotel fielded several pickers, while a nucleus of volunteers hailed from Truro Cathedral, their roles ranging from marketing and volunteer management to a choral scholar.

At 86, cathedral congregation member Charles Butchart was possibly the weekend’s oldest contributor, and an example to us all. “I’ve been conscious of litter since I was a small boy, and felt it was important to make a contribution today, both personally and on behalf of the cathedral,” he said. “Plus it brings people together – we can live in a bubble.”

Community stalwart Paul Caruana gave a health and safety briefing – most notably to leave syringes and broken glass to be collected with specialist equipment. Then we were off to our designated areas.

I joined Paul, Charles and Truro BID manager Alun Jones in tackling the wooded area between the Shell garage and National Tyres. Between us, we filled several bags with glass and plastic bottles, tin cans and soft plastic snack wrappers. A passer-by thanked us for our efforts and pointed to a presumably little-used bin nearby.

The stench was something else. Paul gamely emptied a plastic bottle full of wee with the eyeroll of someone who’s seen it all before.

There were many utterances of “Who does this?” A single welly suggested a one-legged litterer, but: “Half of this stuff has probably been chucked out of a window,” said Alun, gesturing to the proximity of the main road.

Housing officer Janna Eyre was sprucing up her own patch and fulfilling her employer LiveWest’s commitment to volunteer time. She was part of the Furniss Island party, who turned up plenty of bottles and cans, cigarette butts and vapes, but also part of a firework. “We got hissed at by a swan – I like to think he was being encouraging,” she added.

In total, we collected 12 bags of rubbish - previous events had seen more than 100 bags filled over the weekend. We were rewarded by coffee and mid-morning pasties back at The Alverton.

“It’s nice to have the opportunity to give something back to the community we exist in,” said general manager Paul Ricketts. “We give to charity regularly, but it’s a different thing to be in the mix and doing it yourself.”

Further sessions included a city-centre focus on cutting the cable-ties that remain on lampposts when signs are removed, and scraping off stickers that obscure useful information. Litter picks were also scheduled for Newham, Daubuz Moors, Coosebean, Kenwyn and Hendra.

“If everyone had the idea of picking something up when they see it, the city would be a lot cleaner,” said Alun. I’d go one step further and entreat everyone to just put it in the bin, or take it home.