New plan to manage litter across County Wicklow agreed by councillors
The Wicklow PeopleWicklow councillors have agreed to adopt a new Litter Management Plan.
The Litter Management Plan 2025 to 2028 has been developed, reviewing the previous plan, which ran from 2019 to 2024.
Under the Litter Pollution Act 1997 every local authority is required to have a Litter Management Plan in place and review that plan on a three-year rolling basis.
It is a statutory requirement for the council to undertake that review and ask for feedback and consider any changes in regulation and policy that have occurred during the lifetime of the last plan.
Speaking at a recent council meeting, assistant environmental awareness officer Jim Callery outlined two key policy and regulation changes that have taken place since the last review.
“We now have the Deposit Returns Scheme in place, and also there has been new regulation on the use of CCTV brought in under the Climate Action and the Low Carbon Development Act to facilitate the use of CCTV by local authorities.”
Cigarettes make up the most litter, with 45pc of litter surveyed being cigarette-generated, represents a slight drop from previous surveys, but there's a new rising category of litter from vaping material.
Mr Callery outlined that each local authority is undertaking a survey using the same criteria for measuring how much litter is being generated in the county.
“There's been no big changes in the composition of litter between the last plan and this plan, but we are hoping to see a reduction in packaging waste with the introduction of the bottle and can Deposit Return Scheme in future.”
The 'priority issues' the council has outlined in its new plan include the management of illegal dumping and fly-tipping, dog fouling, and litter from food and drinks packages.
Another area of strategic focus for the council is litter prevention and control measures.
“This is all about how we work with the municipal districts to ensure good litter control and prevention right across our districts,” explained Mr Callery.
“Things like the provision of bins, their collection services, servicing of the bins, street cleaning in the main town centres, but also very importantly making sure that there's good collaboration between waste management and the districts to ensure that any issues that arise anywhere in the districts are dealt with promptly and effectively.”
The PURE project, led by and part funded by Wicklow County Council, remains a key partner to the enforcement unit in tackling illegal dumping. The project allows for a partnership approach engaging stakeholders who are members of PURE.
Current partners are the local authorities of South Dublin and Dun Laoghaire Rathdown, Coillte, The National Parks and Wildlife Service and the Wicklow Uplands Council.
Both Arklow and Bray were included in the 2024 IBAL league surveys and both ranked 16th in Ireland out of 40 towns in their respective surveys.
Each town was judged to be clean to European norms. Brittas Bay and Bray Seafront both featured in a 2023 survey of coastal sites and waterways with both being found to be clean to European norms.
In 2024 the council received €14,733.00 through the issuing of 93 fines. A person convicted of a litter offence may also be required to pay the local authority’s costs and expenses for investigating the offence and bringing the prosecution to Court.
In the Wicklow area the majority of litter fines were issued for offences under Section 3 (1) of the Act— Litter in Public Places (50 fines issued in 2024) and Section 19 -Illegal signs erected on poles/structures (37 fines issued in 2024).
The remaining litter fines were issued for the failing to keep an area litter-free, graffiti/defacement of structures and dog fouling.
Mr Callery believes community participation will be key in helping to combat littering over the lifetime of the plan.
“We are very lucky in County Wicklow to have such a strong participation in every community.
“In every part of the county we have groups involved. There are thousands of volunteers giving up their time to help keep our county clean through several different formal campaigns, but also local groups and individuals getting out and doing their bit in their own area to pick up and control litter.”
Mr Callery believes it’s important that structures are in place to support that community participation.
“The growing focus on climate action, single use plastics and the circular economy is creating opportunities to focus on the elimination of waste at source rather than dealing with its consequences.
“The National Waste Management Plan for a Circular Economy deals with this work in more detail, but it underpins much of our work in community engagement, particularly our partnership with Tidy Towns groups in the county.”
“It’s also very important that we acknowledge and recognise that participation.” he added.