Kilkenny’s litter levels have fallen from moderately littered status to littered this year in the Irish Business Against Litter survey which was published earlier this week.
Kilkenny dropped 12 places since the last round to the 51st spot, which is considered a very disappointing result - particularly for all of those who work so hard on the Tidy Towns and Keep Kilkenny Beautiful committees.
Over 68 per cent of Irish towns and cities are now classed as “litter free”, according to the latest litter survey — however, the group is warning that many areas are likely to suffer this summer with the large-scale reduction of weekend cleaning due to budget cuts. A further concern is that cities are not doing as well as towns as the peak tourist season begins.
An Taisce justified the rating for Kilkenny stating, “Less than half of the sites surveyed in Kilkenny got the top litter grade. There were two seriously littered sites (Loughboy Approach Road and Waterside ) and these are responsible for the overall litter ranking of Kilkenny. Poor maintenance of the grass area along Loughboy Approach Road has resulted in a build-up of litter. The overall impression at Waterside was one of neglect – paint peeling off bollards which were knocked over, poorly maintained grass and graffiti as well as heavy litter levels.”
The survey of 60 towns and cities, conducted by An Taisce on behalf of IBAL, revealed Wexford to be Ireland’s cleanest town, ahead of Ennis. The number of “Litter Free” areas nationwide hit a record high of 41. Athlone and Mallow were the country’s sole litter blackspots, with Arklow ‘seriously littered’.
Tourism is worth approximately €6 billion to the national economy each year. Some 70 per cent of the eight million annual tourists enter the country through Dublin, one-third of them during the summer months.
In contrast to towns, Ireland’s cities are not showing much improvement in litter levels over the last year. Galway was classed as “Moderately Littered” with Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford all graded as “Littered” areas.
