Action to solve litter problems

Fast action needed to solve litter problems

Anton McNulty

LITTER from fast food outlets left on the streets of many of the county’s towns has been described as a ‘major problem’.
Speaking at a at a meeting of Mayo County Council’s Strategic Policy Committee on the Environment last week, Ballina town councillor, Johnnie O’Malley described money spent on cleaning the streets of this litter as ‘negative’ money as it was spent fighting a problem rather than being used for local improvements. He explained that Ballina Town Council spends €350,000 per year of rate-payers’ money trying to tackle the litter problem in the north Mayo town. The problem with the fast food outlets is that the littering is caused late at night and people wake up to find litter on their front door or in their garden.
“Unfortunately, litter outside fast food outlets has become a major problem especially late at night. There has to be some strong legislation to bring order because people continually picking up litter is not going to work.”
Cllr O’Malley added that it was mostly elderly people who had to pick up the litter from outside their houses the morning after it was dumped at their gates.
The new Litter Management Plan and the written submissions received after the public consultation process were presented to the SPC by Dr Karen Donnelly of Mayo County Council. Of the submissions given, there were calls for increased public awareness, frequent street-cleaning and to force fast food outlets to deal with litter.
Cllr Eugene Lavin said that while a mobile street cleaner was frequently requested by different towns, they could not clean around cars on the street and you ‘cannot beat’ the man with the wheelbarrow and brush. He said it was unfortunate that domestic rubbish was now being put in the town bins and called for extra street-cleaning in the morning.
Cllr Margaret Adams claimed that the key to keeping the streets clean was education and called on the Council to support community groups to encourage pride in their area. She said that while fast food outlets were responsible for keeping the front of their premises clean, many people were hanging around the streets looking for lifts and would dump the rubbish further up the street.
Fine Gael councillor Seamus Weir defended the fast food outlets, saying that they provided a good service and there were worse places for young people to be hanging around. He claimed the problem of littering came down to ‘common sense’ and more should be done to educate the public.
Mr Patsy Bourke, acting Director of  Services with the Council said he could not understand why people did not put their litter in a bin and claimed that littering was a ‘basic lack of respect for other people’. Cllr O’Malley responded saying that there is ‘nothing like a hefty fine to generate respect’.