Durham in the 1950s, as a rare cine footage shows the city as it was 70 years ago

A cine clip shows that recycling was alive and flourishing on Wearside in the 1950s.

The Sunderland Echo can share the 72-year-old mini movie thanks to the North East Film Archive which is determined to promote the environment through heritage.

A big push on recycling

Take a look at the film which shows a family visiting Durham in 1951. They drop litter everywhere they go, but a young boy goes around cleaning up after them.

They browse the shops, the city walks and have a picnic by the Wear.

The film was shot at a time when the campaign against littering was really stepping up in the country.

A spokesman for NEFA said: "The 50s saw a big push against littering, with the ‘Keep Britain Tidy’ campaign launched in 1954.

"We have seen much research in trying to find alternative materials to things such as plastic and an encouragement to reuse, and only a few months ago a ‘Reuse’ shop opened at Sunderland’s Household Waste and Recycling Centre, which gives new life to unwanted items.

'Think about how we might recycle'

"Such initiatives will hopefully encourage us to change habits and practices away from the new and instead think about how we might recycle and make."

The film is the latest to be shared by NEFA and its previous clips have included open sea swimmers in Seaham in 1963, and a focus on Washington New Town's first 7 years.

NEFA has a huge catalogue of over 70,000 items of original film, video tape, and born-digital material.

A shopping trip to C&A

It has previously shared footage with the Echo of Sunderland's trams, and a trip to the town centre in the 1970s to look at shops such as C&A, Jacob Clark's as well as the Studio cinema.

The archive operates over two regional sites: Yorkshire Film Archive, based in York, and North East Film Archive, based in Middlesbrough.

Interested people can find out more about its work and collections by visiting the archive’s website at https://www.yfanefa.com

The registered charity also has a Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/YFAandNEFA