News 

A new report produced by Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful, highlights the need to bank the gains in the fight against litter.

The Cleaner Neighbourhoods report, which analyses the findings of the 2019 Northern Ireland Litter Survey, provides some encouraging news, showing there were improvements in the levels of litter and dog fouling across Northern Ireland.

The report, which details the results from the 2019 survey period, states that 86% of the streets and public spaces surveyed were deemed to meet an acceptable standard for cleanliness, an improvement on the previous year's results. The levels of dog fouling across Northern Ireland were also found to have declined; in 2019 only 6% of the 1,100 streets, roads and open spaces surveyed had dog fouling present, compared with 10% during the 2018 survey.

The most commonly observed item of litter in Northern Ireland’s streets and public spaces was cigarette butts. These were found to appear across all land use types with 60% of surveyed areas having at least one cigarette butt present, although there were often many more. Drinks containers, including plastic bottles, cans and takeaway coffee cups, were also noted as a recurring issue, observed in 45% of all surveyed areas.

Further Room for Improvement

Although the report indicates a slight reduction in dog fouling levels, it was noted that dog fouling clusters or ‘hotspots’ are still a problem. Streets and public spaces that did have dog fouling present, were found to have had an increased likelihood of having multiple occurrences, with one recreational area surveyed having as many as 9 dog fouls present on a 50m stretch. This supports the idea that a failure to clean up dog fouling is influenced by ‘signalling’, i.e. the presence of dog fouling indicates to other owners that not clearing up after their pet is acceptable in the area.

Rural roads, whilst improving, are still a problem and are disproportionately affected by litter when compared to residential, recreational and retail areas. 24% of rural roads failed to reach an acceptable standard for litter. Rural roads suffer mostly from the presence of plastic bottles, cans and take away coffee cups with 82% of transects having at least one drink container present. This type of litter will almost always come from cars with passengers carelessly throwing their empty drinks out of the windows.

The impacts of Covid-19 have put additional pressures on Waste collections services throughout Northern Ireland. There is a need for everyone to act responsibly and ensure they are disposing of their waste in an appropriate manner.

Commenting on the report Dr Ian Humphreys, Chief Executive of Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful, said

"We welcome that we have seen improvements last year in the fight against litter and now is not the time to take our foot off the peddle. Littering, no matter how small, damages our environment and hurts public health. The message is clear, disposing of our waste properly protects our vulnerable environment, just as it protects vulnerable key workers and public health. Working together, all sections of government and the community, we can all play our part in making a difference".

The Northern Ireland Litter survey is a country wide survey that is carried out by Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful to assess the quality and cleanliness of our public spaces. The objective of the survey is to benchmark the cleansing performance of the councils by rating them against the same scale, thus ensuring a fair comparison. The results of the survey also provide a picture of the levels of different kinds of litter across Northern Ireland, how these vary by area, and how littering trends are varying over time.

The report concludes with a number of recommendations that Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful believe are necessary to meaningfully reduce littering, dog fouling and related environmental damage to Northern Ireland.

You can read the full report at: https://keepnorthernirelandbeautiful.knib.app/keepnorthernirelandbeautiful/documents/007934.pdf

ENDS

To speak to a press spokesperson or for more information please contact Jamie Miller, Local Environmental Quality Manager for Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful at: Jamie.miller@keepnorthernirelandbeautiful.org T: 07725262248

Eco-Schools are marking the one-month milestone of our #StayConnected campaign. Using the best approaches in technology we believe that we can still work closely together whilst staying apart. With schools closed for the foreseeable future, Eco-Schools are determined to ensure that parents, teachers and pupils still get the most out of our programme and learn about the importance of looking after our local environment. More importantly, Eco-Schools has always played an important role in promoting the benefits for the mental health and well-being of people from feeling a connection with the environment.

Over the past four weeks we have been thrilled with the level of engagement from pupils, teachers and parents across Northern Ireland who have sent in their entries. Every week pictures are posted on social media with our Facebook and Twitter pages sharing some of the best. We have asked families to take up baking in order to reduce plastic packaging. We have also tried to get pupils to listen out for local nature on their daily exercises. This week we are asking our followers to create their own storyboard to share their key environmental message.

All of these tasks are fun and interactive, keeping pupils active with schools off and also giving tasks that the entire family can enjoy together. This is all part of our programme’s goal of keeping people connected whilst we are all being asked to stay home, protect the NHS and save lives.

Speaking about this milestone, our Eco-Schools Project Officer, Dr Francesca Di Palo said;

“We are delighted with the response we have received so far for this campaign. Parents, pupils and teachers have engaged with such enthusiasm that it really gives us confidence that the values and goals of Eco-Schools can thrive even in the most difficult circumstances. I want to take this time to thank all of those who have taken part so far.

If you haven’t been following the challenges so far but still want to take part, don’t panic. All of our challenges are available on our website. You can also view them on our Instagram, Facebook and Twitter pages for you to read and take part. Just remember to tag our pages so we can spread the creativity far and wide. This is a positive campaign to keep people connected and everyone is welcome to join”