Mixed results in latest litter report for Cork

Cork city has again missed out on achieving a clean status in a national litter survey.

The first national litter survey of 2024 by Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL) showed Cork city centre is “moderately littered”, once more just missing out on clean status and ranking 24th out of 40 towns and cities surveyed across the country.

The study revealed an overall improvement in litter levels, and a decrease in cans and plastic bottles on Cork’s streets.

The report, published on Monday, praised Cork city centre for a “solid performance” in the survey, with just three heavily littered sites recorded and no litter blackspots. The three sites were at Anderson’s Quay, Granville Place, and Kent Train Station.

Environmental charity An Taisce, who carried out the survey on behalf of IBAL, said if Cork city could address the 13 moderately littered sites found in the survey, it could push the area up in the national league of litter.

“This should be achievable, especially considering the recent works / enhancement schemes e.g. South Mall and Princes Street,” the report said.

Improvements were noted at Kennedy Quay which was still moderately littered but not nearly as heavily as in previous reports.

The study found there to be “massive improvement” on Railway Street and William Street which both earned Grade A status.

Pembroke Street was found to be “attractively paved” with large planter boxes and staff of premises seen sweeping outside. The licensed premises along Washington Street had wonderful and substantial planting, used to great effect, the report found.

In closing, An Taisce suggested Cork city centre might benefit from a cigarette butt awareness campaign based on the number of sites whose litter grade was brought down by the presence of cigarette butts.

Mallow is again inside the top ten for least littered, while “moderately littered” Mahon showed much improvement on last year. Cork’s northside, while still littered, improved also.

Eight out of the ten sites surveyed in Mallow got the top litter grade, with Mallow Town Park, West End, Mallow Train Station, and the IDA Business and Technology Park all getting special mentions.

Overall, the study showed a healthy rise in Irish towns reaching the Cleaner than European Norms tier of cleanliness and a fall of 35% in the number of towns branded “littered”.

“Our study paints a much better picture than a few years ago, with levels of cleanliness definitely rising,” said IBAL’s Conor Horgan.

“Once again, no town was judged to be either a ‘litter blackspot’ or ‘heavily littered’ – that’s real progress,” he added.