The latest Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL) survey revealed Dublin’s north inner city and Cork city’s northside as leading areas for litter, despite some overall national improvements from last year.
Only two out of 25 sites surveyed in Dublin’s north inner city received a ‘clean’ grade, marking the lowest number of clean sites in recent years.
The An Taisce report noted marked improvements in the cleanliness of Dublin city centre, although several sites still hindered attainment of a fully clean status due to ongoing litter issues.
Plastic bottle and can litter decreased by 50pc following the introduction of the Deposit Return Scheme, yet they remained prevalent in 20pc of surveyed locations.
Residential areas, bus and train stations, along with recycling facilities, were found to be the most littered, maintaining concerns amidst improvements observed in main streets and tourist areas. Conor Horgan from IBAL shared “Unfortunately litter was everywhere in the north inner city, in stark contrast to the city centre just a few streets away. We need the council to come good on its intention to convert the entire city to bin collection services. It is high time that appropriate legal changes were brought into effect to allow the council to pursue those responsible for littered basements. We hope that the scheme will see the disappearance of this litter, but statistics so far do not bear this out. Cans and plastic bottles are far from a rare sight on our streets and in our hedgerows.”
