Cork towns and villages clean up at Council anti-litter awards

The success of the Cork County Council’s Anti-Litter Challenge in kindling community spirit and civic pride has prompted the local authority’s chief executive to express the hope that the same effort should be harnessed to tackle the challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss.

Moira Murrell was speaking at the presentation of awards held in County Hall where towns and villages across the county were recognised for the efforts of their high-visibility vested volunteers to keep their communities free of litter.

Cork County Council’s Anti-Litter Challenge was established in the 1990s, introducing an element of friendly inter-community competition to the ongoing problem of dealing with the issue, and 20 towns and 66 villages entered this year’s competition across a number of categories.

The competition is judged on the presence of litter. Each town or village started off with 100% for three periods of two weeks in May and June. During each judging period, adjudicators visited each participating town and village and they were deducted a full point for each item of litter — such as a chocolate wrapper or coffee mug — and one tenth of a point for each cigarette butt.

The winning town in category A was Dunmanway with Passage West and Millstreet filling the runner-up positions while Castletownbere emerged as the winner in category B, followed by Kinsale and Schull in second and third positions respectively.

Two north Cork towns, Mallow and Charleville respectively, finished first and second in category C with Crosshaven earning third place. 

Cobh was awarded the title of most improved town. 

In the highly competitive villages categories, Saleen was declared as the tidiest large village and Ballinhassig claimed the best small village.

County Cork’s deputy mayor and a long-time Tidy Towns volunteer, Martin Coughlan, said that the standard of cleanliness was high this year, something which would have been evident to people travelling throughout the county during the summer.