Navan is "moderately littered” improving from 34th to 29th in litter survey

The first post-lockdown survey by Irish Business Against Litter shows that Navan is “moderately littered” improving from 34th to 29th.

In tandem with most towns, Navan improved in 2021, but not enough to reclaim Clean status, the An Taisce report for the town stated.

It went on to say that approach roads to Navan presented well, two of them were very much deserving of the top litter grade.

Trimgate Street and Emmet Terrace were both excellent with regard to presentation and litter.

The Bring Centre off R147 was heavily littered, with items stuffed beneath, between and behind the units.  There was no change to the litter grade at the residential area of St. Patrick’s Park – it was still subject to widespread dumping of large household items.

While the majority of our towns have cleaned up over the past 12 months, litter in our main cities has worsened to levels not seen in ten years.

The survey found that Drogheda was among the most littered of 40 towns and cities surveyed nationwide. Dundalk remained moderately littered in 27th spot.

Portlaoise emerged as cleanest town. The study found no fall-off in PPE litter across the country.

The number of areas deemed clean by An Taisce, who carry out the survey on behalf of IBAL, rose from 17 to 23. In all, 68% of towns showed an improvement on last year.

IBAL’s Conor Horgan commented: “With local authority cleaning schedules normalising again and volunteer groups re-engaged in clean-ups across the country, our towns are almost as clean as 2 years ago. This is still some way short of where they were in 2014, however.”

All but one of the bottom 10 places in the rankings were occupied by urban areas. “For cities, this survey paints a bleak picture,” comments Conor Horgan.  “Litter levels have worsened to a level we have not seen in the past ten years. Now that we have emerged from lockdown, we cannot use it as an excuse for high levels of litter.

“As we invest in promotional drives and build city hotels in anticipation of more visitors, we need to be mindful of the littered environment we are presenting to them.”

The study showed a near-30% increase in the prevalence of PPE masks on our streets and an increase in alcohol-related litter such as cans and bottles.

“The need for PPE has not abated – unfortunately we’re still using disposable masks, we’re still dropping them at an alarming rate and they are still not being picked up,“ says Conor Horgan.

“We are consuming more outdoors and this is translating into more food- and drink-related litter.” Despite this, the survey showed a 20% drop in coffee cup litter. There was also a steep fall-off in cigarette butts.”