Devizes' white horse had gone green, so volunteers are putting up to 30 tonnes of chalk back on it. In Vermont, a first cleanup pulled 1,300 syringes off a riverbank.

Wiltshire has eight white horses cut into its chalk, and the one above Devizes is the odd one out: the others face left, this one faces right. It was cut into Roundway Hill in 1999, and the years since left it green enough that people in the town below were saying it needed a clean. 1

This month it is being re-chalked with up to 30 tonnes of chalk. The slope is steep, so the chalk is hauled up and then carried the last stretch by hand. The old chalk bed was cleaned and a new layer of local chalk laid on top. 1

Amardeep Malhi, the project manager for National Grid, called the work "a real challenge" and said working with local organisations had made it easier. "It's been a fantastic example of people coming together to care for a much-loved local landmark," he said. 1

Vanessa Tanner, the mayor of Devizes, gave the plain reason for the work. "We're really happy that it's being re-chalked because it's been a bit green recently," she said. The horse stands high enough to be seen from almost everywhere in town: "a wonderful thing for the town". 1

Vernon Few drove one of the machines that made the horse in 1999. He went back up the hill to see the work in progress. "I'm glad they're cleaning it again," he said. "It's not everybody [that's] got a white horse on the hill, is it?" 1

The re-chalk runs alongside a bigger change to the same skyline. National Grid is replacing 4.6km of overhead power line and 13 pylons with underground cable in the North Wessex Downs national landscape, a job its project page calls "a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform the skyline in Devizes". 2 Simon Fisher, the Devizes town clerk, has called the scheme one of the largest civil engineering projects the town has seen for many years. 3

On Friday 25 September, more than a dozen volunteers split into four groups and worked the riverbank in White River Junction, Vermont, from the Main Street Museum up to the new Leahy Shelter and Resource Center. Over several hours they collected roughly 1,300 syringes in sharps containers supplied by the HIV/HCV Resource Center. 4

It began with a swim. Caitlin Sabins had taken her nine-year-old son to Veterans Park on Railroad Row a couple of months earlier and found syringe waste in the sand under the bridge. She filmed what she found and posted it to Facebook. "Not for judgement, but for compassion," she said. "People are struggling. I want to bring attention to this." Sabins works in outreach with Connecticut Valley Addiction Recovery and has spent 18 years in recovery. 4

Joanne Brown has lived in White River Junction for about 50 years and turned out with her three dogs, tired of finding the orange caps on her walks. She had mixed feelings about the exchange programme behind the litter: "giving out the syringes, aren't we asking for the debris?" She agreed the rubbish had to go. 4

Other volunteers came from public health, among them Stephanie Gibson, a public health analyst for Vermont with the Overdose Response Strategy. Kate Garrison, a mobile outreach nurse at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, said the group was "trying to take some of the load off of the Hartford Police Department". 4

The resource centre is based in Lebanon, New Hampshire, and has run a syringe exchange since 2006, serving Grafton and Sullivan counties in New Hampshire and Windsor and Orange counties in Vermont. Last year it handed out about 3,800 doses of naloxone, the medicine that reverses an opioid overdose, and tracked about 780 overdose reversals. 4

The CDC counts syringe services programmes as community-based prevention work and links them to an estimated 50% reduction in HIV and hepatitis C incidence. Nearly 30 years of research, it says, shows comprehensive programmes are safe, effective and cost-saving. 5

Laura Byrne, the resource centre's executive director, has heard the argument from both ends: complaints about the needle waste, and complaints about the people clearing it. She said she would be happy to field calls about the work, "especially concerns". A nonprofit offering to absorb the complaints about its own programme is the part of this I did not see coming. 4

The cleanups are planned monthly "until the snow gets really bad", posted on the town of Hartford's website with no registration and a minimum age of 16. QR codes around White River Junction, including at Hartford Town Hall, let anyone who finds syringe waste ask staff to come and collect it; the nonprofit's site is h2rc.org. 4

Anyone who does pick one up is asked to wear thick gloves, use tongs or pliers, drop the needle into a thick plastic container such as a laundry detergent or kitty litter bottle, seal the lid with duct tape, write "do not recycle" on the side and put it in the trash. Anyone stuck by a needle should wash the wound with soap and water and reach emergency care within 72 hours for post-exposure prophylaxis; the PEP hotline is 1-888-448-4911. 4

At the Devizes end, National Grid's project page carries the route, the timeline and the plans for the landscape once the pylons come down. 2