Galway City Centre was one of only two cities in the country to be labelled ‘Clean’ in the latest IBAL litter survey.
The final litter survey of 2023 by the business group Irish Business Against Litter shows our worst-performing towns continuing to improve.
For the first time since surveys began 20 years ago, last year no area was deemed ‘seriously littered’.
Waterford was again our cleanest city, ahead of Galway. These were the only cities to be judged ‘clean’, with Cork City Centre improving to ‘moderately littered’ but Dublin falling to ‘littered’, alongside Limerick.
The Ballybane area was also surveyed as ‘Moderately Littered’, but has climbed from 36th out of 40 in the previous survey to place 30th this time.
Dublin North Inner City occupied last place in the table but its ‘littered’ status was an improvement on past years.
“There is some good news in our cities, however,” says IBAL’s Conor Horgan. “For years our worst performing areas were deemed either ‘litter blackspots’ or ‘seriously littered’.”
“This baseline would seem to be changing, with ‘littered’ becoming the bottom tier. Cleanliness begets cleanliness, and there is reason to hope the improvement will continue in future years.”
A surprise finding of the IBAL study was the rise in coffee cup litter, which is now close to peak-Covid levels. Coffee cups were found at over 30% of the 500+ sites surveyed.
“We are concerned at potential delays in introducing a coffee cup levy,” says Conor Horgan. “We believe this action is needed to stamp out a product which is out of step with the circular economy.”
“Irrespective of how recyclable or compostable take-away cups are, these statistics show too many of them are ending up on our streets.”
There was another significant rise in the prevalence of disposable vapes, highlighted previously as an emerging source of litter. These were found in more than 10% of all sites covered.
