McDONALD'S staff from Upton and Birkenhead teamed up to help keep the banks of the River Mersey clean as part of the restaurant chain's ongoing war on litter.

As part of Keep Up the Clean Up, teams of volunteers from the company take to the streets to tackle litter in their communities.

The group embarked on the challenge to clean the banks of the river of plastic and other waste, using a boat hired from the National Marine to reach inaccessible areas of the riverbank.

The team collected an impressive 10 bags of rubbish.

Mark Rogers, operations consultant for the company's Upton and Birkenhead restaurants, said: "McDonald's has been collecting litter in our communities for over 35 years, and I'm proud of our litter fighting heritage.

"It's more important than ever we continue in the fight against litter and I would like to thank everyone who gave their time to join us for this event.

"The River Mersey is an important landmark and it benefits everyone to try and keep it as clean as possible."

McDonald's crew members have been cleaning up litter dropped in our local communities for over 35 years.

Crews across the UK cover a total of 3,000 MILES each week on litter patrols. This equates to 150,000 miles, or the distance of FOUR marathons per restaurant per year.

McDonald’s is tackling litter in local communities, both by litter picking and reducing the amount of waste its restaurants produce and have set itself the target of sending zero waste to landfill by 2020 (with many restaurants already achieving this in 2017).

The organisation has been working to make recycling easier over the past four years, and since 2015 have installed over 1,100 new recycling units, meaning it’s easier to separate plastics and cups for recycling in 85% of its restaurants.

It also collects used oil from its kitchens and turns this into enough biodiesel to fuel more than half of its delivery fleet.