DUVETS, clothing and cutlery are all items you might expect students to throw out at the end of the university year.

But this year, ten televisions, six fridges, five iPod docks, a laptop and even a full-sized lightsabre are among the items discarded by students in Southampton.

They are just a few of the thousands of unwanted objects collected in the past month by Eco Ernie, a revamped milk float, which yesterday celebrated its fifth year of cleaning up the streets of the Polygon.

To mark the occasion, a special birthday present was presented to Ernie as volunteers rooted through this year’s bumper crop of discarded items at the Central Baptist Church, in Devonshire Road.

The scheme was set up by Southampton Solent University to make sure items thrown out at the end of the university year don’t go to waste.

Since then it has gone from strength to strength, with student volunteers, residents and council workers collecting thousands of items a year, and students donating bags containing anything from shoes and clothes to duvets and irons.

The items will then go on to various charities – clothes and shoes will go to the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Air Ambulance’s Bag It Up appeal, DVDs, books and music to Oxfam Music Charity, and duvets and pillows to the St Francis Animal Shelter.

Kitchenware and domestic electric goods will be taken on by Southampton City and Region Action to Combat Hardship to provide start-up packs for families in need.

And any remaining books will be collected by Southampton’s Free Books stall.

To celebrate Ernie’s fifth birthday, a huge mountain of bags was collected by the volunteers.

They contained, among other things, televisions, fridges, iPod docks, George Foreman health grills, a laptop and 200 pieces of cutlery.

Among the more unusual items collected this year were a pair of leopard print wellington boots, a bingo machine, a brandnew skateboard and a lightsabre toy, complete with sound effects.

One of Ernie’s student volunteers, 27-year-old computing student Kyle McKellar, said: “This year I think has been very successful, there’s been a good lot of stuff that could otherwise have gone to landfill.

“It’s good to feel you are doing something to help.”

Scheme coordinator Tom McCann, 23, said: “When the scheme started, the problem in the Polygon was that when all of the students moved out they would just leave a lot of their items out on the streets.

“A lot of it is stuff that can be used, but they obviously couldn’t take it home with them. So instead of letting it pile up on the streets and then go to landfill, we make sure as much is reused as possible.”