UPDATED 12.58pm

PORTLAOISE HAS BEEN named Ireland’s most littered place. The Irish Business Against Litter group (IBAL) named and shamed the Co Laois town in its 2010 survey of its members around the country.

Carlow won the IBAL Litter League, with a grade A overall result. IBAL noted that the use of litter awareness and dog fouling notices at all the sites surveyed was having a desired effect on the behaviour of locals there.

Portlaoise was described as having a “serious litter problem” in the league sent to TheJournal.ie this morning. Next in the name and shame list were Mallow, Nenagh, Dublin city, New Ross and Cork city, all of which were deemed to be “littered”. Cobh, Naas, Athlone, Enniscorthy, Roscommon, Navan, Tallaght and Midleton were described as “moderately littered”.

The top ten cleanest towns in the IBAL league table will each receive a number of birch trees for local planting – the winners of Ireland’s cleanest town will be announced just before lunchtime. In the running is Carlow, Drogheda, Longford, Trim and Wexford town.

Not to worry, Portlaoise, you could still turn it around. Ireland’s most litter-free town in 2009, Bray in Co Wicklow, was described in IBAL’s 2008 second round results table as “seriously littered”.

If litter-watching is your bugbear, IBAL invites members of the public to take photos of litter blackspots and out them on Twitter. It’s part of a ‘litter twitter’ campaign to alert local authorities to littered areas and hopefully prompt them into action.

IBAL chairman Dr Tom Cavanagh said:

We’ll be forwarding pictures on to local authorities and pressing them to address these blackspots.

You can email the pictures to litterspotter.2010@twitpic.com. If you like looking at litter, you might be interested in IBAL’s Twitter account at twitter.com/litterspotter – pics on there include that of a littered bus stop in Clondalkin and the back of an abandoned bed lying in a river. A more recent one is of a littered grassy verge in Portlaoise.