Tipperary town in 29th position out of forty in litter league for towns and cities

Tipperary town has failed to retain its Clean status in the final litter survey of 2019 by business group Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL). It is ‘moderately littered’ in 29th position in the ranking of 40 towns and cities, the same spot it occupied in last summer’s survey. The survey showed overall litter levels in Ireland’s towns were up on a year ago.

The An Taisce report stated: “With six top ranking sites you would expect Tipperary town to retain its ‘Clean’ status but the presence of a litter blackspot and a seriously littered site brought down the overall ranking.  By far the most heavily littered site  was the fine old building with ‘Bank Place’ signage (lock on the gate) – the basement had been used as a dumping ground.  The Bring Centre at Tesco (Limerick Road) was not quite so bad but non-recyclable items had been discarded around the recycle units.  The ‘Field with IDA Signage’ has had a big clean up since the previous survey but now fencing was discarded within, a potential hazard for horses grazing in the field.  Top ranking sites included the approach roads, Tipp Town Shopping Centre and the Main Street –despite the latter having a very high number of vacant / closed down properties, many of which presented very poorly.“

Kilkenny topped the IBAL litter rankings for a record 4th time, having last won in 2014. It finished ahead of Killarney, which was 3rd in 2018, and Swords at the top of the table. In all, 21 of the 27 towns inspected were deemed clean, a great result but down on previous years. Galway edged out Waterford to claim cleanest city as it enters its year as European City of Culture. The city areas of Galvone in Limerick, Ballymun in Dublin and Cork Northside were ‘littered’, with Dublin North Inner City at the foot of the rankings.

“In 2019 we saw an unwelcome increase in isolated heavily littered sites within many towns, among them Tipperary, which brought down their scores,” said Conor Horgan of IBAL. “Citizens and tidy towns groups need to push local authorities to focus on these sites and ensure they are clean for when IBAL revisits them in 2020.”

The past decade has brought a 13% reduction in litter levels in our city centres, while litter in towns has remained constant over the same period. “We’ve seen the fruits of the greater attention given to keeping our city centres clean,” explains Conor Horgan, “to the point where they are now almost as clean as our towns. In 2019, for the first time, all were deemed clean.” IBAL has been surveying disadvantaged city areas over the past 5 years but has seen little reduction in litter over the period.

Sweet wrappers, chewing gum and cigarette butts remain the most common forms of litter on our streets. “Perhaps no one item illustrates the link between litter and the broader environment better than the cigarette butt,” contends Conor Horgan. “Cigarette filters are essentially single-use plastic which readily winds its way into our sewers and rivers, adding to the problem of plastic pollution, which threatens to see more plastic in our oceans than fish by 2050.  Yet every day we see people nonchalantly flicking butts onto our pavements.”

From next year, an EU directive will force tobacco manufacturers to cover the cost of cigarette butt collection and processing in an effort to drastically reduce the numbers of cigarettes disposed of in the environment. “Alongside regulation, we would like to see active recycling of butts, which would encourage their proper disposal, as once a butt is littered on the ground, it cannot be recovered.” Irish start-up NoButts.ie is turning butts into cellulose acetate for re-use in sunglasses and other products and is looking to set up supply arrangements with local authorities.     

IBAL is offering to facilitate the setting up of a pilot programme to recycle butts in Kilkenny, as winner of the League. In addition, a number of trees will be planted courtesy of The Tree Centre in Fermoy.

2019 was the 17th year of the IBAL Anti-Litter League.

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