The Irish Business Against Litter Anti Litter League published the first round of its litter monitoring survey this morning.

Countrywide, 24 towns now have ‘Litter Free’ status including Greystones which is at number 16 of 53 in the league.

Since the full year report of 2005 there is bad news for Wicklow Town. The towns position has gone from 29th in the league with a status of ‘moderately littered’ to position 44 and a status of ‘Serious litter problem’.

Arklow has gone from having ‘Litter free’ status to ‘Moderately littered’ (position 12 to position 31). Bray still has the status of ‘Moderately littered’ but has improved somewhat and moves from position 41 to 34.

Commenting on the publication of the results, Dick Roche TD said:

“I am very happy with the part played by businesses in relation to the Anti-Litter League; the league has, for the most part, had a significantly positive impact on the visual environments of participating towns - in 2004 only 11 of these towns had litter-free status today 24 towns are in this category.  I am especially pleased that Greystones is among those with litter free status but it is disappointing that Bray and Wicklow have registered ‘moderately littered’ and ‘serious litter problem’ results, respectively.”

Continuing the Minister said, “the IBAL league is now well established and has become a prominent indicator of a town’s attractiveness, therefore it is now up to the relevant local authorities to push for better results in this challenge.  I hope that these results will spur these councils on to take more effective action. We also need to change the attitudes and behaviour of people who simply drop their litter on the streets. Education and awareness is important but we also need to step up enforcement. The mindset has to change. Litter is not cost free. It costs the taxpayer and local ratepayer a significant amount of money to clean up litter and it does damage to the reputation of towns up and down the country. This minority who do damage to their local community need to change their ways.”