World Earth Day passed me by but not the good folk from Knutsford’s Friends of the Moor who filled more than a dozen black bags with rubbish after carrying out a spring litter pick.

A team of volunteers tackled litter around the Moor, supported by staff from Tatton Park, and as well as the usual rubbish, they also came across tyres and a supermarket trolley dumped by fly-tippers.

Well done them, I thought at first. I have a lot of time for volunteers who give up some of their own time to help others. Over the years, volunteering has played a big part in mine and my family’s life and still does to this day.

Generally speaking volunteering is something that enhances life both for the volunteer who has the satisfaction of contributing to their community and for those who benefit.

How many ‘Friends of’ groups are there that make things just a little bit better? And where would we be without those kind souls who run our food banks?

There are two strands of volunteering. There is the strand that enhances what we have and seeks to make it better. Then there is the strand that has grown up to fill a void left by failing public services – food banks being the most obvious example.

Surely the need for volunteers to go out into the streets or local beauty spots to pick up other people’s rubbish shows a massive failure of national and civic pride and an even bigger failure in education.

Organised litter picks are treating the symptom not the cause. While consistent enforcement of littering and fly tipping laws is necessary, surely the solution starts with education in schools and a wider scheme to instil some civic pride and encourage people not to litter rather than going round cleaning up after them.

Of course, a combination of systematic education, enough council street cleaners and enforcement takes money and effort. I’m guessing that a government that appears to be happy with sewage in rivers isn’t going to pay much attention to litter on our streets, in our beauty spots and in our hedgerows any time soon.