To understand how bad London's drug and homeless problems are, go visit the riverbank

If you want to get an idea of how bad London's drug and homelessness problem is, just go down to the riverbank.

"I have never seen anything that we're seeing on the scale nowof people living rough down at the river," said Tom Cull,the co-founder and co-director of Antler River Rally, a volunteer organization that, for the last decade, has regularly cleaned up the trash that linesthe banks of the Thames.

Lately, the group has its work cut out for it. Not only does the number of people sleeping rough near the river appear to be at an all-time high, so is the wastepiling up onthe banks.

Submerged shopping carts, filthy mattresses, old blankets, ripped couch cushions, tin foil, credit cards, half filled bottles of pop and, hidden among the heaps of refuse on the water's edge,are bloodied tourniquetsand used needles.

'We never do a cleanup without finding needles'

"We never do a cleanup without finding needles. We always find them. It's just about how many we find."

In fact, there are so many that Cull tries to pick up as many as possible before other volunteers happen upon them. On Friday, he found at least two dozen, strewn on the parkway, on the ground, between cement parking bunkers and a large number of them left safely inside empty soft drink bottles.

The city's growing drug and homeless problem has led to months of soul searching by the city over what to do about the problem. While city workers regularly swept encampments away, the pandemic changedthat, which opened unused public green spaces such as flood plains or river banks for the city's poorest residents.

Morepeopleliving and sleeping rough along the water's edgebrings more waste, but Cull argues that it'simportant to realize that homeless people don't generate any more waste than others, they don't get their garbage picked up at their doorstep, so their waste isn't invisible.

"Our garbage is taken away and put into a landfill site and people who are experiencing homelessness live their lives out in the public for everyone to see and be judged," he said.

Cull said pollution is a problem that comes from all of the city's economic strata and to illustrate his point, he saidone of the most common pieces of waste found by the river are small plastic bags filled with what's left behind by pet dogs.

'This problem is much bigger'

"We're talking about homelessness but this problem is much bigger This is a question of how we consume. How many pieces of single use plastics are down there?"

The fact is, homeless or not, everyone leaves an environmental footprint. Cull will often return to the same patch of riverbank year after year or month after month only to clean it up again.

It might seem frustrating, but he doesn't see it that way.

"The work is meaningful," Cull said."I believe in this river and I believe in this community and I want to improve things."

"Sharing the load and sharing our work of looking after this river and tending to our responsibilities as citizens, as people who live beside this beautiful river, it's very meaningful."