Mayo town excels in IBAL litter survey

The first national litter survey of 2024 by business group Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL) shows Castlebar is ‘cleaner than European norms’.

Coming in at sixth place in the ranking of 40 towns and cities, Castlebar showed strongly in the study. The study reveals an overall improvement in litter levels, and a decrease in cans and plastic bottles on our streets on foot of the new Deposit Return Scheme. 

The report found that Castlebar’s approach routes were presented well, creating a positive first impression of the town. 

This was sustained for the majority of the remaining sites surveyed, and there were no heavily littered sites. 

Clearly a careful eye is kept on the various closed down and vacant premises along Bridge Street and Market Street, as there was no litter directly associated with them.

As a general note, there was plenty of evidence of Tidy Towns activity throughout, such as colourful planter boxes at Market Square, planting at Lough Lannagh Car Park and the Tidy Towns cart parked along Newport Approach Road, beside the Educate Together school. 

The study, conducted by An Taisce on behalf of IBAL, showed a healthy rise in towns reaching the upper tier of cleanliness, ‘Cleaner than European Norms’, and a fall of 35 percent in the number of towns branded ‘littered’. 

Naas regained the top position it lost last year, ahead of Monaghan and new entrant Blanchardstown. Ballybane in Galway slipped to the bottom of the rankings.

“Our study paints a much better picture than a few years ago, with levels of cleanliness definitely rising,” said IBAL’s Conor Horgan. 

“Once again, no town was judged to be either a ‘litter black spot’ or ‘heavily littered’ – that’s real progress,” he added.    

There was a near 30 percent fall in the prevalence of can-related litter since the previous survey. While plastic bottles were also less common than in any past survey, they remain the third most prevalent form of litter on our streets.

Mr Horgan continued: “It’s early days, and we’re still seeing too many plastic bottles on our streets, but we can expect further improvement as people become accustomed to the Deposit Return Scheme and the legacy non-returnable items are flushed out of the system. Ultimately, we should see can and plastic bottle litter disappear entirely.

“These initial results indicate that if there's a monetary incentive to do the right thing, people will respond. The same logic applies to a coffee cup levy. Tackling specific litter types with tailored measures is the most effective way of ridding our streets of litter. We concede that it's an inconvenience for people, but that's a price we must pay.”

Cigarette butt litter remains stubbornly high, present in over 30 percent of the 500 plus sites surveyed.

Coffee cups, while down, were present in 1 of every 5 sites surveyed. Unlike in some countries, the Return Scheme does not include beer bottles, which were found in 10 percent of sites, making Mr Horgan question why these bottle cannot be returnable also.

The IBAL spokesperson called it ‘disappointing’ to see no progress in ‘the development of degradable chewing gum’. 

“Across a swathe of industries, companies are adapting their products and packaging in the interests of the environment, but there seems to be no impetus for gum manufacturers to take such a step. As a result, their products lie on our streets for decades and decades,” he concluded.