Survey: Cork's Mahon only area of country 'seriously littered'

Cork city centre one of six areas in 'littered' category as Waterford the cleanest city surveyed, for third year in succession

Mon, 09 Jan, 2023 - 07:13

Cormac O’Keeffe

Cork city centre and Mahon are two of Ireland's litter black spots, with the situation in the south city suburb deteriorating in the last year.

Mahon now languishes as the only surveyed area in the country to be in the "seriously littered" category in the Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL) survey.
Cork city centre is one of six areas in the "littered" category.

Cork’s northside is ranked higher in the "moderately littered" category, while Midleton is the only Cork location in the highest category — "cleaner than European norms".

For the third year in succession, Waterford City is the cleanest city, ahead of Galway, the IBAL survey found.

It said the litter problem in Dublin city centre and Dublin’s north inner city had improved on last year.

Overall, 75% of the 40 cities and towns surveyed were ‘clean’, compared to 50% a year ago.

Naas won the top prize, pipping Kilkenny and Maynooth, according to the survey, carried out by heritage body An Taisce for IBAL.

Cork’s northside is ranked in the 'moderately-littered' category.

Outside of Midleton, Cork locations performed badly in the survey and bucked the overall trend of a 6% improvement in cleanliness and, within that, a 12% rise in urban area results.

“Mahon in Cork deteriorated to ‘seriously littered’ at the foot of the table,” IBAL said.

It said An Taisce reported dumping as a definite issue in the suburb.

Many sites were let down not just because of casual litter but due to presence of dumped items such as dirty nappies.

The body reported little improvement in ‘littered’ Cork city, which included a number of black spots, such as Kennedy Quay, Carmelite Place/Western Rd, and the North Ring Rd, where “there was no let-up on the dumping along this road".

"As well as bags of rubbish, there were larger household items eg chairs, white electrical appliances. It was in a very, very poor state," it said.

IBAL said that this was in contrast with Dublin city centre, which rose to "moderately littered", as did Galvone in Limerick, recording one of its best scores of recent years.

Dublin’s north inner city was again littered but much improved on 12 months ago.

“The results reflect a pattern of improvement since the peak of the Covid pandemic, when litter levels soared, especially in cities,” said IBAL’s Conor Horgan.

Rubbish dumped near Assumption Rd, Cork.

As well as Cork city centre and Dublin north inner city, other ‘littered’ areas were Limerick city centre, Ballymun in north Dublin, Galway inner city/Ballybane, and Dundalk.

Tallaght and Drogheda were in the ‘moderately’ littered category.

Included in the 17 locations in the "clean to European norms" category were Athlone, the Dublin south city suburb of Crumlin, Portlaoise, Tralee, Tipperary, the Waterford city suburb of Ballybeg, and Killarney.

Following Naas, Kilkenny, and Maynooth in the "cleaner than European norms" category were Castlebar, Ennis, Letterkenny, Cavan, Monaghan, Mullingar, Gorey, and Midleton.

Mr Horgan said plastic bottles and cans continue to be a major source of litter, second only to sweet wrappers.

He said this bolsters the case for a deposit return scheme, due to be introduced this year, which will see consumers paying a deposit which they can reclaim on returning their containers.

“Based on this data the scheme is sorely needed and stands to rid our streets of a significant amount of litter. The same applies to the proposed coffee-cup levy,” Mr Horgan said.

While there was a fall in the prevalence of coffee cups, they were still found in 25% of sites surveyed.