IBAL survey: Cork regions improve in cleanliness as Mallow places in top 10

THE first national litter survey of 2024 by business group Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL) has seen Cork City miss out on clean status in the ranking of 40 towns and cities.

Mallow, however, has once again made the top 10.

The study, conducted by An Taisce on behalf of IBAL, found Cork City centre to be ‘moderately littered’, with just three heavily littered sites and no litter blackspots.

Mahon, while found to be ‘moderately littered’, showed much improvement on last year.

The report acknowledged community and council efforts as just one site was heavily littered out of 10 sites surveyed in the area.

Cork City’s northside was found to be ‘littered’ with improvements at some sites including Kilmore Rd and Cathedral Rd.

Several top-ranking sites were noted, including Shandon St, Blackpool Shopping Centre, North City Link Road, and Mulberry Heights while Fairfield Meadows and Cushing Place suffered from significant levels of dumping.

Mallow was ranked ‘cleaner than European norms’ with eight out of the 10 sites surveyed in the town receiving the top litter grade.

Green Party councillor for Cork City North East, Oliver Moran, said a civic agreement reached between the Green Party, Labour, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael for the next five years touches on many of the issues that underlie the causes of litter: “One of the ideas is to explore the setting up of Business Improvement Districts that give the traders in an area more autonomy, and the budget necessary, to address local issues at the shop front and street-level like litter.”

Independent councillor for Cork City North East Ken O’Flynn said that from his experience of being on the ground people feel the city is dirty.

“We need to invest far more money than what is being invested in public bins and litter awareness in schools,” he said.

Fine Gael councillor for Cork City South East, Des Cahill, described the report as good for Mahon as it demonstrates the improvement to the area, thanks to the newly formed Mahon Tidy Towns.

“Citywide there is progress. More needs to be done and it will be done. Cooperation between the council and residents and business owners is imperative,” Mr Cahill said.

Fine Gael councillor in the Mallow area, Tony O’Shea, described the report findings as “a huge win for Mallow” and said the town’s Tidy Towns volunteers try so hard each year to improve the the area’s scoring.

“Credit goes to all involved with Mallow Tidy Towns and Cork County Council’s street cleaning staff who put in huge work and effort every single day of the week,” Mr O’Shea said. “There isn’t a day that goes by that you wouldn’t see someone from Tidy Towns working either watering flower baskets/planting flower beds or litter picking so a lot of credit goes to those volunteers.”

Generally, the study showed an overall improvement in litter levels, and a decrease in cans and plastic bottles on streets on foot of the Deposit Return Scheme.

There was a near 30% fall in the prevalence of can-related litter since the previous survey.

While plastic bottles were also less common than in any past survey, they remain the third most prevalent form of litter on streets.

The study showed a rise in towns reaching ‘Cleaner than European Norms’ — and a fall of 35% in the number of ‘littered’ towns.