'We are on the verge of a litter crisis' - British 'grotspots' cleaned for the Queen

Volunteers will tackle the country's worst litter sites in March in what is being billed as the largest ever clean-up of the British environment ahead of the Queen's 90th birthday in June

The canal bank beside Northbrook Street near Birmingham city centre looks and smells like a tip. The grass is strewn with plastic cups, fag packets, cans, tins, wraps, cloth, papers, peel, binliners, bags, butts and bottles. Builders have come in vans and flytipped waste, kids have graffitied the brickwork.

The canalside has been nominated by the public as one of the worst "grotspots" in British cities and an army of volunteer litter pickers will descend on it and hundreds of other places in March in an attempt to tackle what has become known as the "blight of Britain".