On Friday, The Sea Shanty Festival in Falmouth began, with the town alive with music and singing. Inbetween the noise was local charity Clean Ocean Sailing, picking up rubbish before and after the event.

A horrifying video appeared on Facebook, litter strewn across Customs House Quay. As reported by Clean Ocean, there were over 100 plastic pint cups floating in the water on Sunday morning. This forced the charity to use a canoe to paddle around the harbour and collect the cups. The canoe that was used was made entirely from rubbish that had been picked up on Cornish beaches. It appeared the bars had run out of the reusable cups and reverted to plastic cups.

Clean Ocean Sailing, posted on their Facebook page, on Sunday morning: "There were over 100 plastic cups floating in the water, and we filled three large bin bags with rubbish from the harbour."

The charity posted again: "There is a horrible amount of plastic - mainly in the form of single-use plastic cups. How are we still using single-use plastic at festivals?"

Founder of Clean Ocean Sailing, Steve Green, told Nub News: "It was worse than last year, we did the event last time and tidied up every morning and at the end of the event.

"It wasn't deliberate, it was just random people leaving stuff on the floor, and then when the bins are full the seagulls pull stuff around so a lot of stuff ended up in the harbour.

"We counted it yesterday actually, there were 248 plastic cups in the harbour, so I dread to think how much we have missed."

There are calls for future Sea Shanty Festivals to provide more recycling bins.

Steve Green, added: "We shouldn't be using plastic pint glasses, there should be a pound deposit on refillable ones.

"You buy a pint and you go back with your refillable glass and they wouldn't refill it. Apparently, that is to do with sterilisation, just ridiculous.

"We all worked together to clean up, three times a day the council sent people down to empty the bins, but obviously you can't come down in the evening and do it because it is just heaving with people."

A selection of comments was left under the post, one user said: "Sad to see so much plastic waste. Time for the Falmouth Sea Shanty Festival to ditch the one-use cups completely."

Another user said: "I am really sad to hear Falmouth is not on board with banning plastic cups. Good, there were reusable cups for sale, but perhaps the Falmouth Sea Shanty Festival needs to seriously team up with Clean Seas to raise awareness of the environmental catastrophe we face unless we take this seriously."

Falmouth Town Council and the Falmouth Sea Shanty Facebook page have been contacted for a comment.

For more information on Clean Ocean Sailing, and how to donate, press the button below.