Most towns now litter free by EU standards

THE MAJORITY of towns in the Republic are now “litter-free” by normal European standards, environmental group Irish Business Against Litter (Ibal) will announce today.

The group, which published its final 2009 litter league tables yesterday, said that while towns and villages are getting cleaner, cities are getting dirtier.

According to the league tables almost two-thirds of the 60 towns surveyed were classed as “litter-free”, while the majority of the cities were classed as “littered”.

Ibal said it would not reveal the name of Ireland’s cleanest town until this morning’s announcement in Dublin’s Merrion Hotel.

But it did reveal the top five contenders: Bray, Cavan, Clonmel, Drogheda and Longford. The inclusion of Bray is a dramatic turnaround for the Co Wicklow town, which was last year named as the State’s dirtiest town.

A record 39 towns are now now classed as “litter-free”, compared to only two when the survey began seven years ago. To illustrate the improvement, the points scored by Monaghan in finishing 37th in this year’s ranking would have sufficed to make the town the cleanest in the State in 2002.

But despite the improving results, Ibal called for a rethink on whether local authorities were the best bodies to control litter enforcement.

“Until we have a rethink of how litter enforcement is managed locally, the nationwide clean-up will never be complete. Maybe the task should be taken away from local authorities altogether, as it is in some other countries,” said Dr Tom Cavanagh, chairman of Ibal.

“Despite what the Litter Act says, local authorities are not compelling businesses to keep the visible areas inside their property, such as car parks, forecourts, shrubberies and basements, as well as pavements, clear of litter. They will fine individuals, but are not prepared to enforce the law on businesses,” he said.

As part of the survey, almost 50 public houses on main streets were found to be in breach of the litter law.

Ibal also said it would continue to highlight chewing gum as a major litter problem, as, unlike other litter types, it remained on the pavements indefinitely.

“Now that the Government’s partnership with gum manufacturers has concluded, we are awaiting word on whether they will treat the issue seriously by introducing the long-awaited gum tax. We will still be walking on chewing gum thrown on our streets today for the next 25 years,” said Dr Cavanagh.

To mark their success, the top 10 towns in the Ibal league each receive a number of birch trees for planting locally. These are provided by the Irish Tree Centre, an Ibal member based in Co Cork.

Ibal also revealed it has been approached by Copenhagen city council to help clean up that city.

The Copenhagen Kommune has requested Ibal’s assistance in helping the city, already acknowledged as among the best-maintained in the EU, to achieve its aim of becoming Europe’s cleanest capital by 2015.

City blackspots

Dublin city was ranked 51st out of 60 towns and cities surveyed.

Some of the poorest city centre sites mentioned were South William Street and Parnell Square (West and North), Moore Street.

Cork city was 50th out of 60 towns/cities surveyed.

Approach roads are unacceptable, being either "seriously littered" or "litter blackspots".

Galway city was 45th out of 60 towns/cities surveyed. Less than half of all the sites surveyed in Galway city were clean to European norms.

By far the worst site surveyed was the promenade.

Limerick city was 60th out of 60 towns/cities surveyed. Within the city William Street, around Lidl and the Fairgreen service station seemed particularly bad, Ibal said.