WHILE THE NUMBER of cans and plastic bottles on streets has fallen since the introduction of the Deposit Return Scheme, overall litter levels did not reduce last year.

That’s according to Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL), which finds Dublin North Inner City bottom of the pile for littering, with Dublin City Centre just one position above it.

Overall littering at the end of 2024 was on a par with levels 12 months before.

Among the least littered areas, Naas finished atop the rankings for the third time in four years, ahead of Kilkenny and Monaghan town.

An Taisce, who conduct the surveys on behalf of IBAL, praised Naas on an achievement “that didn’t happen overnight” and cited the recently opened Naas Plaza among many sites that were “spotless”.

In all 60% of the towns and cities surveyed were deemed ‘clean’.

Killarney, which outlawed disposable coffee cups in 2023, was one of the most improved towns last year, rising from 14th to 4th in the rankings. 

While Galway and Waterford were among the cleanest cities, generally, cities tended to be far more littered than smaller towns, with built-up areas occupying all but one of the bottom 10 places in the IBAL league table.

Limerick and Mahon in Cork saw some improvement on previous years.

Dublin’s North Inner City was the only area to be branded ‘seriously littered’.

According to the inspectors, “vast quantities of loose food and alcohol related litter had been discarded” near Emmet Road in Dublin, while Sherrard Street Upper in the Inner City suffered from “bags of domestic rubbish, the contents of which have been ripped open and scattered about”.

Another blackspot was Crinian Strand, a short stretch of residential housing “with large household items e.g. mattresses / furniture discarded along the pavement, along with at least a dozen black sacks of rubbish – the contents of which were being scavenged by seagulls.”

IBAL says these findings strengthen its case for a ban on “bag bins” in the city.

The ban came into force in south inner city last week, with an extension north of the Liffey planned for the summer.

It should be noted that there was a fall in 2024 in the number of sites within cities and towns that were deemed ‘litter blackspots’, which IBAL says suggests that local authorities were generally more effective in tackling urban dumping and in addressing sites that had previously been highlighted.

The survey also revealed that the prevalence of plastic bottles and cans in the 500+ sites monitored had halved since the Deposit Return Scheme was introduced last year.