Hundreds of squirty cream chargers left in field
Irene McCormickNearly 400 canisters which hold gas intended to create squirty whipped cream were dumped in a field over the weekend.
The pile was discovered by Irene McCormick, her husband Freddie McCormick and Harry Lane, a fellow volunteer from Community Champions Middlesbrough, who were tipped off by a shop owner they stopped to talk to.
The volunteers counted 367 canisters in total and used a vehicle to transport them to the McCormicks' garage to be bagged and collected for scrap.
Irene McCormick said it took an hour to clear the field in Easterside and described the scale of the fly-tipping as "just absolutely shocking".
She said: "Most of them were whipping cream canisters of various makes, we thought they had been banned.
"Whoever dumped them must have gone to the field at least three times to put them all there, there were so many."
Cleveland Police said it would welcome any information from anyone who knew how the cans ended up on the field and warned against people using them for the propellant gas inside them, which is "potentially very risky to health".
Nitrous oxide in the canisters is covered by the 2016 Psychoactive Substances Act which means it is illegal to give away or sell for its psychoactive effect.
Irene McCormickFreddie McCormick removes the brass tops from the canisters and trades them in to raise money for charity.
He said: "We started on our own in 2016 just picking litter near the hospital and now we do litter picks most days.
"For a few years I kept track of how many bags we collected and in the first year we collected over 1,200 bags."
The retired couple now work with Community Champions Middlesbrough and believe they have gathered more than 10,000 bags of rubbish from around the town over the last decade.