Clare retains 'clean' status, but slides further down table in latest litter rankings

Irish Business Against Litter have released their litter rankings for 2025 with Ennis featuring amongst the forty towns and cities surveyed throughout the country. 

Clare has retained its clean status, in 15th spot in the ranking of 40 towns and cities, which were ranked either clean to or cleaner than European norms, as set out in the latest litter survey by business group Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL).

Former IBAL winning town Ennis saw a downturn in the most recent figures ranking 15th, having previously ranked 13th in 2024, 12th in 2023 and 5th in 2022.

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The inspectors from An Taisce, and appointed by Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL) stated that Ennis has four top-ranking sites, with three sites, including Abbey Street and Elevation Business Park, having "just missed the top grade and with a little extra effort this [top marks] could be achieved."

The An Taisce report for Ennis stated that "O'Connell Street was looking very well after recent enhancement works, a lovely town centre environment. Harmony Lane/ Bridge is an attractively laid out river environment, with all elements in very good order."   

It highlighted that, "quite unusually, by far the most heavily littered site in Ennis was the Deposit Return Scheme at Dunnes Stores" but noted that this "should be an easy fix."

The number of towns deemed clean last year rose to 28, with Sligo finishing ahead of Leixlip, Westport and Monaghan.

Waterford reclaimed its customary accolade of Ireland’s cleanest city, ahead of Galway, Cork City Centre was also clean.

While urban areas still dominate the lower reaches of the rankings, 10 of the 13 surveyed showed an improvement in cleanliness in 2025.

Galvone in Limerick achieved clean status for the first time, having been branded “seriously littered” in past years.

“The most pleasing finding of 2025 was the progress made in socially disadvantaged areas,” explains Mr Horgan.

“Even areas at the foot of our rankings have significantly lower litter levels than a year ago. Dublin City Centre and North Inner City, while still littered, are cases in point. 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 also a notable fall-off in the number of sites with large accumulations of litter or subject to dumping, with Mr. Horgan explaining: “This continues a very welcome trend we’ve seen in recent surveys and credit must go to local authorities for ridding our environment of these litter blackspots.”

This was the first IBAL survey where no bottle bank was deemed a litter blackspot.

It also revealed that the Deposit Return Scheme continues to have a positive impact on the cleanliness of towns and cities around the country with a 10% drop in the prevalence of cans and plastic bottles compared to figures from 2024.

The findings also documented that coffee cups remained one of the most commonly found forms of litter and was evident in one fifth of all sites surveyed whilst the rates of littered disposable vapes remained unchanged.