A trail of red elastic bands between home and school at first perplexed and then concerned six-year-old Thalia Duffy.

Environmentally-aware Thalia started to pick up the bands dotted along the walk between her Salisbury Avenue home and St Mildred’s School in Broadstairs.

In two weeks, she had collected more than 100 from pavements, verges, hedges and gutters which she identified as coming from bundles of mail.

Thalia became worried about the possible danger to pets and birds who might get them caught around their beaks and legs.

She and her mum Gaynor contacted the thanetextra.co.uk to draw attention to the problem in a bid to stop it.

“I don’t think it is very good because we have to think about what we are doing in the world,” said Thalia.

Mrs Duffy said: “The children are taught about recycling in school and this is not a very good example. We are going to hand the bands back to the local sorting office and hopefully they will be recycled.”

A Royal Mail spokesman said the bands were bio-degradable and rotted away naturally after some months.

He added: “Our people know they shouldn’t drop rubber bands. However, they’re focused on delivering 82 million items a day and can’t always keep track.

“The vast majority of elastic bands are successfully recycled but unfortunately they have a habit of flying off at times. We will remind our staff to take extra care to avoid dropping bands.”