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A COMMUNITY IN Cork has figured out it could raise more than €19,000 if it were to fine everyone who litters there on a daily basis.
Located on a busy main road, the village of Glounthaune has a lot of passing traffic. This has led to litter problems on its streets.
Speaking on C103′s Cork Today show yesterday, the village’s Tidy Towns vice-chairperson Conor O’Brien said that the group decided to take action and hire a professional to monitor how many cars pass through on a daily basis.
Over the course of a week, three monitoring points were installed throughout the village.
The results found that 11,500 vehicles pass through on average every day.
“Analysing the litter, we would say there’s about 130 littering events every 24 hours. For every 100 cars that pass, one of them is going to litter,” O’Brien said.
If a litter warden sees somebody littering, they are authorised to issue an on-the-spot fine of €150.
Therefore, if a litter warden was to fine everyone who litters in the village on a daily basis, they would raise over €19,000 on average.
O’Brien said that tissues, cans, plastic bottles, cigarette packets, chocolate wrappers and sandwich packs are found on the village’s streets every day.
“We have been very careful in picking up the litter in the past number of years. Obviously it gets frustrating when you see the relentless nature every single day,” he said.
O’Brien admitted that catching everyone in the act is unrealistic.
“You will never get anywhere near as close to that,” he said.
As a solution, O’Brien suggested that CCTV could be installed in the village to catch people who were depositing their litter onto the ground.
Ultimately maybe you could do CCTV surveillance in litter control vans that could be moved to the litter hot spots from time to time – the same way speed control camera vans have helped.
“Most cigarette smokers, when they just throw their cigarette ends out of the car… they don’t really think they’re littering,” he said.
He said the Tidy Towns committee has been working with the local primary school for years and continues to run annual awareness competitions.
During the competitions, the committee hangs a large sign up on road signs.
“It’s really reinforcing to the kids in the schools [who] would be proud of their work and maybe the odd person passing by would think about litter.
Signs alone aren’t going to change your behaviour. You need to have a bit of the stick of the fining as well.
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I really wish they would stop talking about enforcement in this country and concentrate on actually doing enforcement instead. Put up cctv cameras. Go ahead and earn your €19000 a day. Put the money into social housing.
@John Mullan: cctv dosent lead to fines. Identification of offenders is fairly difficult that way. Has to be boots on the street with a garda presence. Only way. And the government dosent care enough to finance that.
We are a filthy race no doubt it, map what litter you see on open litter map.com, they are looking for your images to highlight the problem of litter, plastics in particular.
Why are the comments closed on the foster child matter raised in the Dáil by Fiona O Laughlin TD?
Any O’Brian sandwiches in the litter ?
Go for it I say, grab that dough
Glounthaune ‘Streets’ – there is one main road – the old N25 going through it.
Any littering done there is by locals now.
Go to the cinema anytime after a movie and see the litter that’s left behind for others to pick up after them. Mentality is” someome will pick up after me.” I think instead of sponsored walks etc. If the council would fund a group eg young football team fundraising for picking up rubbish along an area. It could be called ” Picking up the dirty habit as in Litter”, Just back from Germany and Austria and they are so so clean compared to Ireland. No litter to be seen anywhere .
Fire away…
I used to drive the backroads from watergrasshill in cork to Blackpool amount of litter and bin bags thrown in ditches people should be ashamed of themselves
Instead of bitching about the litter why don’t they get a couple of TUS workers to keep the streets clean.
@Chris Kirk: How about employing people full time to do the job instead of this TUS rubbish.
@Chris Kirk:
Better yet get the TUS workers and trainee Gardai to supervise the cleaning of our roads and streets by the numerous toerags found guilty of public order and other anti social crimes.
@Jonny: Fine if you have money to pay them, most councils can no longer affoed it.
have your say