Mayo town tumbles in the latest IBAL litter rankings
The latest litter rankings have been published.
Castlebar has fallen a number of places in the latest Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL) rankings.
The county tows is ranked joint 14th nationwide, down from sixth spot in mid-2024.
Top-ranking sites in Castlebar included the approach routes, Main Street car park and Main Street. Inspectors noted that Main Street has been attractively presented and maintained with lovely paving / tree planting etc.
By far the most heavily littered site surveyed was a laneway off Cavendish Lane.
“It presents very poorly with overflowing industrial wheely bins / wooden pallet and large piece of plastic wrapping,” stated An Taisce inspectors.
A fall in plastic bottles and cans on our streets, brought about by the Deposit Return Scheme (DRS), was not enough to reduce overall litter levels in Ireland last year, the IBAL report found.
The latest survey of 40 towns and cities shows Naas was the cleanest town in the rankings, with Dublin North Inner City bottom of the pile.
In all, 60% of the towns and cities surveyed, including Castlebar were deemed ‘clean’. Galway replaced Waterford as the cleanest city, but city areas occupied all but one of the bottom 10 places in the IBAL league table, despite some improvement in Limerick and Mahon in Cork.
‘Littered’ Ballybane in Galway and Dublin City Centre deteriorated year-on-year, while Dublin North Inner City was the only area to be branded ‘seriously littered’.
On a positive note, 2024 saw a further fall in the number of sites within cities and towns that were deemed ‘litter blackspots.'
