A beauty pageant contestant says seeing her own area cluttered with litter inspired her to hit the streets to get it looking its best.

Jodie Whitehead from Muswell Hill has been collecting rubbish around Alexandra Park in a do-it-yourself “bag it and bin it” litter picking campaign.

“I just couldn't believe what I had to walk through,” she told the Ham & High. “It’s such a shame that these pretty areas are engulfed with rubbish.

“I know the council is very busy — but what a better world we would live in if everyone took ten minutes every week in their spare time to pick up litter.”

Jodie moved to north London from her native Lincolnshire when she was a teenager to train as a patisserie chef but now works as an estate agent sales manager at Dexter’s Hampstead branch.

The 24-year-old said seeing the very streets where she is trying to sell homes filled with litter made her realise something needed to be done.

“We go out every morning to speak to vendors and post our marketing letters through front-doors,” Jodie explains. “I couldn’t help noticing the amount of rubbish piling up on the road and in front gardens.

“It was taking the beauty away from many of Hampstead’s listed buildings.”

She competes in beauty pageants — finishing in the top eight in ‘Miss International’ in Warrington on Saturday — and in her spare time campaigns to make public spaces look good.

She said: “A big part of being in the pageant community is wanting to make a difference in the world. Even my small part will help.”

Jodie recently cleared rubbish floating on the duck pond in Alexandra Park, getting rid of bottle lids, vapes and even dummies.

Jodie hopes to organise a group litter pick with anyone interested. Just drop an email to alison.whitehead45@btinternet.com.

But most of all, she wishes people would just stop dropping their rubbish in the streets.

“I can only collect one bag at a time,” Jodie added. “Some of the large glass bottles can be heavy."

She said the litter she picks up most often includes plastic tampon applicators, hats, gloves “and loads of vapes”.

But most common of all are plastic bottles, which could end up in sewers and rivers and eventually in the world’s oceans if they are not picked up.