Limerick City and County Council is responsible for the prevention and control of litter and has the power to take enforcement action (LCCC, 2019-2022). The council is also responsible for cleansing programmes and the provision and servicing of litter bins in towns and villages while keeping public places free of litter (LCCC, 2019-2022).
Limerick City and County Council prepared a Litter Management Plan (2019-2022) to tackle litter and waste management with its main objectives focusing on awareness, prevention, control and enforcement. A copy of this plan was sent to schools, community groups, resident associations and business groups. The adoption of the Litter Management Plan is a reserved function which was adopted by councillors in 2019.
Litter includes but is not limited to cigarette butts, chewing gum, dog fouling, advertising and fly tipping. Limerick supplies litter and waste information to the National Litter Pollution Management System (NLPMS) following regular surveys. NLPMS then produces a catalogue of the types of litter and changes in the litter levels from location to location and over time, highlighting black spots and whether there is an impact on new litter measures that the council would have adopted (LCCC, 2019-2022). Irish Business Against Litter carry out annual surveys in Limerick which is run by An Taisce and they have highlighted blackspots for a number of years. Due to frequent dumping, CCTV was recently installed to monitor and address litter levels.
To inform the Litter Management Plan, surveys were taken from 2016/2017 identifying the top three contributors to litter in Limerick. Cigarette butts (55%), packaging and food/sweet wrappers were found to be the biggest types of litter found within Limerick.
The causes of litter were, passing pedestrians (30%), passing motorists (16%) and retail outlets (17%). Overall nearly 45% of litter is caused by pedestrians and motorists with another 42% being caused by retail, group gatherings and fast food outlets. The spending allocation for Limerick City and County Council on litter prevention in 2018 was €4 million for which €3.4 million was allocated to street/road cleaning with the remainder being spent on litter warden services amounting to €515,000 and public awareness and promotional activities at €73,000.
Education and Awareness is the first pillar of the Litter Management Plan. There are many various programmes targeting education and awareness through school and community group associations. Annually on Good Friday, Limerick City and County Council in partnership with Mr. Binman and the JP McManus Foundation run Team Limerick Cleanup as both an educational tool and a means of getting rubbish off our streets, roads and communities. Results year on year show the same amount of rubbish being collected at around 94 tons or 3900 wheelie bins with the same type of waste being collected. This is measured through characterization studies and surveys received from participants. TLC also runs online and school competitions to further highlight and educate children on waste prevention and reduction.
Every year Going for Gold provides funding to community groups which aims to make Limerick a cleaner, brighter place to work, live and play. The initiative focuses on sustainability and environmental programmes which highlights ways of reducing waste, upcycling and using what we have in our community as opposed to buying new items.
Tidy Towns groups across the city and county take part in the annual Tidy Towns Competition which aims to make their towns and villages cleaner, litter free, sustainable and biodiversity friendly. Annual seminars are held to promote and support community involvement in the improvement and enhancement of the local environment. An Taisce’s annual Spring Clean ties in with other litter prevention and reduction initiatives and involves a one-day community driven clean-up day.
An Taisce’s Green Schools programme promotes long term whole-school action for the environment. Teachers attend a yearly Green Schools seminar in Limerick where each of the 8 flags is broken down and workshops are given around the most up to date initiatives targeting each individual flag. The schools undertake the programme to achieve 8 flags for their school beginning with Litter and Waste to the final flag which looks at marine life from a global citizen perspective. A number of secondary schools and colleges continue the programme to work in their own setting.
Limerick City and County Council as part of their actions underlying their key objectives, will continue to promote litter avoidance and will continue their efforts to reduce single use plastics, create awareness amongst staff, develop policies as was recently done through the department of climate action, communications and environment where no single use plastics are to be used in council organized events such as St. Patrick’s Day and Riverfest and lastly to develop a strategy for the promotion and sponsorship of litter related events (LCCC, 2019-2022).
A number of campaigns have been run over the last number of years aiming to reducing litter and prevent waste. #RunReuseRefill was a challenge taken up by a rowing club in Limerick who organized annual charity runs. Limerick City and County Council invested in 500 reusable plastic glasses which saved 700 single-use plastic bottles from going to recycling while also saving 54 volunteers having to clean up after the race while saving €250 for the purchase of water.
The national Conscious Cup Campaign was rolled out in Limerick and aims to reduce and eventually eliminate the use of single use coffee cups in Ireland. It began in 2016 and so far has managed to sign up over 50 cafes in the wider Limerick area preventing many thousand coffee cups going to landfill. Its focus is to get people to bring their own reusable cup with the incentive of receiving a 20c discount off their coffee.
The Refill.ie campaign was introduced in Limerick in 2019 which sought to recruit businesses to sign up to a tapmap where people with reusable water bottles could get them filled. In its first year Limerick City and County Council recruited over 70 businesses which now appear on a national tapmap leading to a reduction of single-use plastic bottles littering our streets and rivers.
Limerick City and County Council’s second pillar focuses on cleansing operations. Street cleansing units comprise of 38 employees operating 7 days a week emptying 212 litter bins per week (LCCC, 2019-2022). The team also look after the maintenance of street furniture, graffiti removal, weed killing, gum removal and monitoring of illegal dumping. The area offices in the county provide street cleaning and emptying of bins to villages and towns.
Civic amenity centers are located in the city as well as in two county locations. Annually, Limerick City and County Council runs campaigns to further highlight the civic amenity centers. These include a free day for everyone to correctly dispose of electronic items, shredding of Christmas trees and confidential shredding days.
There are approximately 70 bring banks within Limerick city and county which are emptied by the council and maintained by some community groups.
Advertising campaigns were launched in 2019 around dog fouling, gum waste and the use of illegal waste collectors. Radio and cinema adverts along with social media campaigns were utilized to tackle dog fouling. These included the slogan ‘any bag any bin’, as well as a speaker on the main walking street reminding dog owners to pick up after themselves. In 2020 there will be stenciled footpath markings to further remind dog users to pick up after themselves. In 2019 Limerick City and County Council worked with the Gum Litter Taskforce on a national day of using the slogan ‘bin your gum when you’re done’. Lastly, there was a radio advertising and animated video campaign (Man in the Van) warning against the use of illegal waste collectors.
Anti-Dumping Initiatives were provided for in 2017 which saw Limerick City and County Council receive €50,000 in grant funding under the anti-dumping initiative to carry out cleanup works which were carried out on 8 sites and in the subsequent year the same funding was granted to tackle a further 11 identified sites (LCCC, 2019-2022).
The final pillar of the Litter Management Plan deals with enforcement activities. There are currently a team of 5 Environmental Control Officers/Inspectors. In 2018 there were 1876 complaints received, 3000 inspections, 448 on the spot fines with 46% collection of fines and 59 legal proceedings (LCCC, 2019-2022).
Daily operations include domestic waste and litter teams carrying out household and commercial waste management surveys to determine the refuse collection arrangements of domestic/business units. As part of their action points on enforcement, Limerick City and County Council will “respond efficiently and effectively to litter complaints received ensuring all cases are recorded on the in-house software system, ensuring inspectors maintain a visible presence in both city and towns and villages while also reviewing the findings of the NLPMS” (LCCC, 2019-2022, p.28).
