A new survey of littering at Ireland’s rivers, beaches and harbours has found that two areas of Donegal are not up to European standards.
Irish Business Against Litter’s survey by An Taisce found that Killybegs was ‘Moderately Littered’ and Bundoran was ‘Littered’.
This is the first nationwide survey of Ireland’s coasts and waterways to be carried out for IBAL.
The study found that only four out of 50 sites examined were clean to European standards. Forty per cent of Ireland’s rivers, beaches and harbours were found to be littered or heavily littered. Salthill in Galway was the only beach on the list found to be clean to European norms.
In the report, Killybegs was described as having a mix of good litter-free and poor littered areas. Much of the litter present was along the rock armour, with marine litter and food related items and occasional items like traffic cones, plasters and gloves littering the area.
In Bundoran, the litter was related to fishermen with broken / dumped items. All other areas within the survey site had small scatterings of litter. Non-food items included street cones and discarded car tyres.
The survey reported that one of the successful tourism initiatives ever undertaken in Ireland – the creation of the Wild Atlantic Way – could be undermined by the levels of litter found at the route’s scenic spots.
Conor Horgan of IBAL said “Sadly, accumulations of litter in and around our waterways are a common sight in Ireland and this is borne out by these disappointing results.”
“If we can call our towns clean, we cannot say the same for the areas around our beaches and rivers. It took almost ten years of naming and shaming for local authorities to get to grips with litter in our towns. IBAL has set about pushing for a similar turnabout in respect of coastal areas and waterways.”
