Students have sparked outrage after leaving piles of rubbish across UK cities as they head home for the summer holidays.
Photos show mounds of waste and overflowing bins in Manchester and Leeds, with sofas , laptops and even bongs among the waste dumped into alleyways.
The weekend closest to July 1 has become notorious for fly-tipping as it marks the point when most shared student house leases expire.
And as they often only spend a year living in their properties, the occupants tend to ditch unwanted items before leaving.
But OAPs living in Fallowfield, Manchester - where over 50% of the population are students - said the mounds of rubbish had “ruined” the area and hit house prices.
Nino Guglielmi, 83, who has owned a local hair salon in the district for 60 years, said the streets near his home became a ‘dumping ground’ each year.
Staring at the refuse in one alleyway, just off Furness Road, he said: “The students have left this weekend, and they’ve thrown all the rubbish all over the place. It’s absolutely ridiculous.
“They’ve thrown divans, they’ve thrown settees, they’ve thrown duvets, they’ve thrown laptops – you name it. They’ve thrown everything and then they go away.
“It ruins the neighbourhood. Nobody wants to buy the properties around here if you want to sell them because it's full of rubbish.
“The property prices have gone down. Nobody wants to live around here anymore. It’s like a dumping ground, Fallowfield.”
Nino, who moved to the Manchester suburb in the 1960s from Italy, said he had tried to tackle the waste with other residents as the problem worsened in recent years.
But he had struggled with heavy lifting after suffering two heart attacks and said other long-standing locals were now too frail to deal with the growing issue.
He said: “The area has got worse. It used to be bad, but now it’s gone absolutely ridiculously bad. One time we did do a bit of cleaning, voluntary work around here.
“We’ve not done it lately because some people have died, and some are old age. But the students don’t do any cleaning up. They just dump it on the floor and they go.
“It makes me angry because now they’ve blocked my entrance at the back. I can’t even get my car inside my garage because they’ve blocked it with the bins.
Nino said the waste attracted rodents, which were kept at bay by a pack of feral cats.
And he felt the local authority was not doing enough to bring students to task who were responsible for the problem.
He added: “The council doesn’t care. We’ve got rats around here, mice.
"And we daren’t put down poison as we’ve got three or four wild cats. Luckily, they keep the rats and mice at bay."
Elsewhere, Leeds Council warned its city’s 50,000-strong student population about dumping illegal waste ahead of 'change over weekend'.
A spokesperson for the local authority said: “Leeds’ universities and their students are an important part of our community and make a massive contribution to our economy and culture.
Photos show mounds of waste and overflowing bins in Manchester and Leeds, with sofas , laptops and even bongs among the waste dumped into alleyways.
The weekend closest to July 1 has become notorious for fly-tipping as it marks the point when most shared student house leases expire.
And as they often only spend a year living in their properties, the occupants tend to ditch unwanted items before leaving.
But OAPs living in Fallowfield, Manchester - where over 50% of the population are students - said the mounds of rubbish had “ruined” the area and hit house prices.
Nino Guglielmi, 83, who has owned a local hair salon in the district for 60 years, said the streets near his home became a ‘dumping ground’ each year.
Staring at the refuse in one alleyway, just off Furness Road, he said: “The students have left this weekend, and they’ve thrown all the rubbish all over the place. It’s absolutely ridiculous.
“They’ve thrown divans, they’ve thrown settees, they’ve thrown duvets, they’ve thrown laptops – you name it. They’ve thrown everything and then they go away.
“It ruins the neighbourhood. Nobody wants to buy the properties around here if you want to sell them because it's full of rubbish.
“The property prices have gone down. Nobody wants to live around here anymore. It’s like a dumping ground, Fallowfield.”
Nino, who moved to the Manchester suburb in the 1960s from Italy, said he had tried to tackle the waste with other residents as the problem worsened in recent years.
But he had struggled with heavy lifting after suffering two heart attacks and said other long-standing locals were now too frail to deal with the growing issue.
He said: “The area has got worse. It used to be bad, but now it’s gone absolutely ridiculously bad. One time we did do a bit of cleaning, voluntary work around here.
“We’ve not done it lately because some people have died, and some are old age. But the students don’t do any cleaning up. They just dump it on the floor and they go.
“It makes me angry because now they’ve blocked my entrance at the back. I can’t even get my car inside my garage because they’ve blocked it with the bins.
Nino said the waste attracted rodents, which were kept at bay by a pack of feral cats.
And he felt the local authority was not doing enough to bring students to task who were responsible for the problem.
He added: “The council doesn’t care. We’ve got rats around here, mice.
"And we daren’t put down poison as we’ve got three or four wild cats. Luckily, they keep the rats and mice at bay."
Elsewhere, Leeds Council warned its city’s 50,000-strong student population about dumping illegal waste ahead of 'change over weekend'.
A spokesperson for the local authority said: “Leeds’ universities and their students are an important part of our community and make a massive contribution to our economy and culture.
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FunTranscript
00:00I'm Nino Milano Studio. I own a salon on 250 Wimslow Road. I've been here over 50 years, right?
00:09I live above my salon, right? Now I have a car which I've got to go in my gate through the alley,
00:17but now they've blocked it with the bins and they've put a post with a combination,
00:24which I don't know what the combination is. So I'm having a great difficult.
00:28I'm 84 years old. I've had two heart attacks. I've got to lift the post, right?
00:34Put it on the side, put it back again. It's a nightmare, a nightmare.
00:39The council should do something about it.
00:41We try to do our best, you know, try to clean because obviously it's not very nice to see, you know, the dirt on the floor.
00:48They've thrown everything out. Television, record player, laptop, you name it.
00:54They throw everything, city, beds, mattress, sheets, duvet, the lot.
01:02I've lived here for 60 years and each year this happens.
01:07The students are going away and they leave all the rubbish for us to clean because we live here, you know,
01:14live in dirt and infected. We have rats, mice, you name it, we've got it.