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\nLimerick City Centre was the only one of the 40 towns and cities surveyed listed as ‘littered’<\/p>\n
Sligo has been named as Ireland’s cleanest town again, according to the latest survey from the business group Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL).<\/p>\n
Overall litter levels were on a par with last year, with 27 of the 40 towns surveyed deemed clean.<\/p>\n
Sligo finished ahead of Monaghan and Leixlip, with Waterford – again Ireland’s cleanest city – in fourth spot.<\/p>\n
An Taisce, which conduct the surveys on behalf of IBAL, praised Sligo in particular for its top-ranking approach roads, “exceptionally freshly presented” Retail Park and the “complete absence of litter” throughout the Great War Memorial Garden.<\/p>\n
There were also significant improvements noted in Navan, Carlow and Athlone.<\/p>\n
The majority of “socially disadvantaged urban areas” improved year on year, with Dublin north inner city, Cork northside, Galway’s Ballybane and Ballymun all progressing from “littered” to “moderately littered”.<\/p>\n
For the first time, only one of the 40 cities and towns surveyed – Limerick city centre – was branded as “littered”.<\/p>\n
\nLimerick City Centre was the only one of the 40 towns and cities surveyed listed as ‘littered’<\/p>\n
An Taisce inspectors notes the lack of clean sites within the city centre and the number of sites that are heavily littered on a consistent basis.<\/p>\n
These included Mount Kenneth Place and the entrance to Henry Street car park; the residential area of Grattan Court; the recycle facility on Dock Road and the laneway at Cruises Street car park.<\/p>\n
“As the peak season for tourist visitors approaches, we have fewer littered areas than we’ve had at any time in the last 25 years,” said Conor Horgan of IBAL.<\/p>\n
“We’re hopeful that we\u2019re on the cusp of a real breakthrough in disadvantaged areas of Dublin and Cork.<\/p>\n
For 15 years we’ve been surveying these areas and for the first time we\u2019re seeing evidence of sustained improvement as a result of greater investment from Dublin and Cork City Councils.<\/p>\n
“If plans in Dublin for the elimination of domestic waste collection in bags across the inner city are realised, we will have a much cleaner capital city.<\/p>\n
“The job’s not done, but across the country, local authorities appear to have upped their game when it comes to tackling persistently littered sites and dumping in our towns and cities,” Mr Horgan added.<\/p>\n
Bottles and cans not disappearing from streets<\/p>\n
Plastic bottle and can litter was found in 19% and 22% respectively of sites surveyed – the highest levels since the Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) was introduced.<\/p>\n
“If we had hoped that the DRS would see this litter disappear from our streets, it’s not happening,” said Mr Horgan.<\/p>\n
“15c or 25c does not appear enough to incentivise some people to return a bottle or can.<\/p>\n
“That said, by reducing this litter by 50%-plus, the scheme’s impact on overall cleanliness levels is beyond dispute.”<\/p>\n
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\nPlastic bottle and can litter was at its highest since the Deposit Return Scheme was introduced<\/p>\n
The prevalence of coffee cups was at its highest level since 2023, making it one of the main sources of litter on our streets, behind sweet papers, fast food wrappers, plastic bags and cigarette butts.<\/p>\n
“Talk of a ‘latte levy’ has all but vanished, yet coffee cup litter clearly has not. The Government inaction on this persistent problem is baffling,” Mr Horgan said.<\/p>\n
The study also revealed a significant increase in cigarette butt litter compared to 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sligo has been named as Ireland’s cleanest town again, according to the latest survey from the business group…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-488627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}