Tipperary's largest town is the sixth cleanest in the country, according to survey

The final litter survey of 2023 by business group Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL) shows Clonmel again deemed "cleaner than European norms” and in sixth spot in the ranking of 40 towns and cities nationwide.

For the first time since surveys began 20 years ago, no area was deemed "seriously littered," with Maynooth claiming top place.

IBAL says the impending Deposit Return Scheme for plastic bottles and aluminium cans will improve cleanliness levels further but is calling for action on coffee cups.

The An Taisce report for Clonmel stated:       

"A very strong performance by Clonmel, with eight out of the ten survey sites getting the top litter grade. Examples of these included West Gate:1,831 and environs; Wolfe Tone Street, O’Connell Street and Marystone Shopping Mall – the latter was attractively paved and adorned with a colourful mural. Clearly a careful eye is kept on the various closed down/vacant/derelict properties throughout the town, as there was no litter directly associated with them. The council car park was the only heavily littered site".

While litter levels rose slightly nationwide, over 60% of towns surveyed were deemed clean in 2023, with Maynooth edging out Mallow and much-improved Sligo to take the title of cleanest town.

Waterford was again our cleanest city, ahead of Galway. These were the only cities to be judged "clean," with Cork City Centre improving to "moderately littered" but Dublin falling to "littered", alongside Limerick.

“There is some good news in our cities, however,” says IBAL's Conor Horgan.

“For years our worst performing areas were deemed either ‘litter blackspots’ or ‘seriously littered’. This baseline would seem to be changing, with ‘littered’ becoming the bottom tier. Cleanliness begets cleanliness, and there is reason to hope the improvement will continue in future years”.