Cork cleaning up its act but some areas remain littered, new survey shows 

Cork is cleaning up its act according to the latest Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL) survey.

The survey presents a snapshot of cleanliness levels across Ireland as the peak summer tourist season commences, ranking towns from clean to littered.

The results have shown improvement in cleanliness across a number of Cork locations, including Mallow, which earned the second place in the ranking of 40 towns and cities.

The North Cork town is categorised as being ‘cleaner than the European norms’, with nine of the ten sites surveyed getting the top litter grade, coming just behind Maynooth for the top spot.

Mahon, which was previously categorised as being ‘seriously littered’, has seen improvement.

The Mahon area has improved to the third category for cleanliness, ‘moderately littered’ alongside Cork city centre.

A representative for An Taisce said: “A big and very welcome improvement was noted at Mahon with no very heavily littered sites this time around. Well done to Cork City Council. Sites which had improved included Avenue de Rennes, Lakelands Crescent and Ballinure Avenue, which were all heavily littered in 2022.” 

An Taisce also commended Washington Street businesses, Dwyer’s and Rearden’s for continuing to keep the area near their property “immaculate.” In many city centre sites, cigarette butts were deemed an issue, including at Railway Street, Penrose’s Quay, Cork Bus Station and Maylor Street.

By far the most heavily littered site was North Abbey Street, with the survey reporting “this narrow and seemingly neglected laneway presented very poorly - not casually littered but subject to dumping.” 

Anderson’s Quay and Bridge Street were also heavily littered.

Despite improvement across most of Cork, Cork's northside, however, has slipped down the ranks to ‘littered’, becoming just one of three areas nationwide in this category, joining Dublin city centre and Dublin north inner city.

Cork's northside has slipped back from its positive end-of-year showing, with too few clean sites and several heavily littered ones, according to the survey. 

Nationally, the majority of Ireland’s towns were found to be clean, but two-thirds of city areas are still found to be littered.