Litter levels have fallen across the State over the last year, with improvements to all urban areas, even Dublin’s north inner city, according to Irish Business Against Litter (Ibal).
Surveys of 40 towns and cities conducted by An Taisce for the anti-litter business group found none were “seriously littered” and the number of towns deemed clean last year rose to 28, with Sligo finishing top for the first time.
However, Ibal said the “collapse” of reusable coffee cup schemes was a “real disappointment in a generally positive year”.
North inner city Dublin remains the dirtiest area in the State, but was “much improved” last year on 2024, when it was judged “seriously littered”.
RM Block
Cameras were installed on a number of streets in the north inner city last year to catch illegal dumpers, and in the coming months a ban on the use of plastic bin bags for refuse collection will be introduced in the area.
Ibal spokesman Conor Horgan said the implementation of such measures could lead to a sea change in the fight against litter
“The most pleasing finding of 2025 was the progress made in socially disadvantaged areas,” he said.
“The investment being made by Dublin City Council seems to be already paying fruit, and we are set to see further progress in 2026 if the council comes good on its promise of replacing bags with bins across the city. This could be a landmark year in the fight against litter.”
There was a “notable fall-off” in the number of sites subject to large accumulations of litter or dumping, and for the first time, no bottle bank was deemed a litter black spot, Mr Horgan said.
However, inspectors did find that Ballybane village and industrial estate in Galway were “subject to long-term dumping and neglect”, while a waste ground at Fairfield Meadows on Cork’s Northside suffered from “phenomenal levels of dumping, items large and small”.
Another black spot was at Balbutcher Lane in Ballymun, Dublin, where “vast quantities of alcohol bottles mingled with household dumping including bed frames, mattresses and garden furniture.”
The Deposit Return Scheme, where deposits can be redeemed for returning plastic bottles and cans, continued to achieve a litter reduction with a 10 per cent drop in the prevalence of cans and plastic bottles compared with the previous year, and a 60 per cent drop since the scheme was introduced.
However, disposable coffee cups are one of the most commonly found forms of litter, evident in a fifth of all sites surveyed.
“A real disappointment in a generally positive year has been the likely collapse of reusable coffee cup schemes in towns such as Killarney,” Mr Horgan said. “It is apparent that such schemes will only work with statutory backing. As our data today bears out, without Government intervention coffee cups will remain an unsightly and entirely unnecessary blot on the landscape across our towns.”
The “prevarication from Government on the issue is striking”, Mr Horgan said. “A levy was promised all of four years ago [this] sends out a worrying signal. Weaning ourselves off single-use coffee cups should not be such a big deal.”
The prevalence of disposable vapes, which are set to be outlawed over the course of 2026, was unchanged.
