Sadly, litter campaigns are still needed

TRAVEL outside any Irish town, on a Monday morning, for about just as long as it takes to eat a carton of chips and you’re almost certain to find packaging strewn around the roadside.

After their takeaway meal, many people just fling the wrappings out of a car for someone else to pick up. You’ll also find drink cans, plastic bottles and other disposable items.

In spite of all anti-littering campaigns, it seems the lesson still hasn’t got home to a great many people. Some would argue that the problem has got worse, if anything. Just look at the state of our main roads, dual carriages and railway lines.

Local authorities are unable to clean up every highway and byway, so the work can fall to volunteers who, basically, clean up their own areas a few times a year.

At present, thousands of people in towns and communities across the country are preparing for the National Spring Clean, which has been held each April for the past nine years.

Organised by An Taisce and funded by the Department of the Environment, the campaign galvanises people to work together and, this year, people interesting in joining the project can register directly through www.nationalspringclean.org.

Last year, a phenomenal amount of litter was collected. More than 340,000 people were involved in 3,600 clean-up events which yielded 3,400 tonnes of waste. There was a 16% increase in the number of volunteers and 35% of the waste collected was recycled.

This was equal to 27 times the weight of the Dublin Spire, eight jumbo jets, 56 army tanks, 34 blue whales, or 567 African elephants.

National Spring Clean chairwoman Patricia Oliver believes the success of the campaign is the wide level of community involvement.

“Every year, we’ve seen the numbers grow and grow and we expect that trend to continue,” she said.

“Most of the participants have realised that the campaign is a positive way of coming together with their neighbours to ensure their road, estate, park, parish, village, or community, is cleaner.

“These volunteers have returned to the campaign year after year bringing in more volunteers to help reduce the amount of litter in their neighbourhoods,” Ms Oliver added.

Every group that registers will be issued with a free clean-up kit, which contains gloves, refuse sacks, information and posters.

The national clean-up can also help towns which are aiming to win awards in the National Tidy Towns’ competition.

Tourist haven Killarney, for example, is now just two, or three, marks short of winning the top Tidy Towns’ award and people in the town are now being asked to get involved in preparations for the European Entente Florale competition.

As the name suggests, the competition is very much about plants and flowers and around 500 trees are being planted on approach roads to Killarney. It’s all about creating a greener and more pleasant environment in towns and cities across Europe.

The judges, who seek exceptionally high standards, will be visiting Killarney, in July, by which time the town should be in bloom.

Finally, on a positive note in relation to waste, more people than ever are recycling their domestic and business waste.

For instance, the packaging recycling rate in Ireland now stands at an all time high of 60%, while the volume of packaging continues to grow in line with changing population trends and economic activity.

Repak and the EPA have announced the launch of a €200,000 packaging prevention programme to help Irish industry reduce the amount of packaging on their products.

One of the aims of the programme is to reduce packaging at the point of production.

Dr Gerry Byrne, chairman of the National Waste Prevention Committee and EPA programme manager, stressed that businesses could save money by reducing packaging.

“Consumers are increasingly looking for this to happen, not least for environmental and cost concerns,” he pointed out.

Repak chief executive Andrew Hetherington said while the initial focus was on achieving Ireland’s EU packaging recycling targets, it was now time to increase our focus on preventing packaging waste arising in the first place.