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THERE’S NOTHING LIKE a day at the beach when the sun shines in Ireland. With sandy stretches and clear water, there is a feeling that, sure lookit, you could almost be anywhere in the world. Except for the rubbish, that is.
“Daddy, look I found an AirPod” a little girl shouted excitedly to her father on a sunny day at my local beach last summer. I watched on as she ran up to him, waving the short white object in her hand.
Amazing what you find at the beach, I smiled to myself as I looked on. Only it wasn’t an AirPod. It was a tampon.
I felt physically sick, not to mention the horrified father and bemused little girl.
I’ve been lucky enough to live near the sea my whole life, and I’d love to tell you that this sort of find is an isolated incident. It’s not. Nappies, picnic remains, food containers, coffee cups, plasters, wet wipes, sanitary pads, tampons. You name it, we’re leaving it behind at our most beautiful beaches and scenic spots far too often.
Something stinks and it’s not just the trash.
A couple of weekends ago, when the lesser spotted sun decided to shine for the first time this year, I like lots of people headed to the beach. We had a great day out, but as we walked back to the car at the end of the day, the bin nearest the beach looked like the aftermath of Monty Python’s Mr Creosote skit.
It was so past the point of being full, it looked as if it had literally exploded with rubbish. That didn’t stop people from using it, however. In fact, they thought it would be completely legit to simply pile their rubbish on top, beside it, and all around it like some kind of trash version of the leaning Tower of Pisa. The even more maddening part was that a few hundred yards down the path, another bin had space in it.
I’ve no doubt most people have good intentions when it comes to cleaning up after themselves, but there is something about groups of people when out and about that seems to spark that latent lazy energy, we all harbour as a species. Once one person starts to pile up rubbish beside a full bin, it’s like a green light has been signalled that it’s grand to follow suit. Sure, it’s beside the bin. That’s got to be better than simply dropping it on the ground, right?
Wrong. We’ve got to start taking responsibility for our own rubbish.
County councils must play their part too. They need to ensure the adequate resourcing and management of waste, providing enough bins and larger dumpsters during the busy summer months. From my own experience, our local council plans fairly well for the crowds, and clean-up crews are out early to keep the seafront area tidy, but even with that, littering is still an issue.
There is also something to be said for the lack of recycling and compost bins available at these scenic spots, but we do need to start getting comfortable with taking our rubbish home with us if these options aren’t there on the day.
Even if you take the idea of a lack of bins or full bins out of the equation, we can still have a strange attitude towards our garbage. It’s the one where people think it’s fine to tip their car boot full of rubbish in a bush up a mountain and then do a runner. Out of sight, out of mind.
It’s the same attitude that sees people go to the trouble of picking up their dog’s poo in a bag, tying a neat little bow and then hurling said bag into a forest. Or weirder still hanging it from a tree, so that it ends up looking like a bizarre modern art installation… Poopulus Tremula, anyone?
Despite good intentions, it just feels like there’s still a disconnect happening somewhere along the way. Ireland is currently forecast to miss its 2025 European Union (EU) target of recycling 50% of all plastic packaging. A recent Repak survey found that only half of people say they always separate their recycling into the correct bins at home. Only 28% claim they always separate their recycling when out and about. Again, many places need to up their game and offer people adequate recycling options when out, instead of one single waste bin, and perhaps those stats will improve.
Still, be it due to confusion or laziness, there’s a lack of adequate recycling and separating of waste going on at home and this is translating into our behaviour and attitudes when out and about.
The most recent litter statistics reveal that cigarette litter is the top polluter at over 50%, followed by packaging at 18.9% and food at 10.2%. It’s safe to assume, however, that when the next set of data comes out, cigarettes will surely be leapfrogged by vape-related litter. Who hasn’t come across piles of empty Lost Marys on the path recently and surfaces covered in those little white stickers?
In the 2008 film WALL-E, a cute little trash robot is left alone on Earth, forming endless skyscrapers of rubbish into tiny cubes. Humans have long since departed, having destroyed the now uninhabitable Planet Earth with waste.
They now spend their days being morbidly obese, living on a futuristic space station looking at screens all day, while their every whim is catered for by an army of robots and AI software.
I can’t help thinking this fun little movie is not a million miles away from where we are headed if we don’t stop trashing the place.
Niamh O’Reilly is a freelance writer and wrangler of two small boys, who is winging her way through motherhood, her forties and her eyeliner.
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It’s pure laziness. If you can carry the stuff to the beach etc. you can carry it home. Good weather always showcases the bad habits of many.
Let there be no mistake Ireland is a filt hy country. Every roadside, footpath, walkway, beach, street, mountain spot, stream, canal, river etc. etc. etc. is full of litter. It’s embarrassingly bad.
@Thomas Meaney: dirty auld town its a dirty auld town, springs to mind
@Thomas Meaney: every? Come on man, less of the lazy exaggeration please.
@james rowan: written about the city of Salford in the UK but yeah could well apply to Dublin. Embarrassing the state of the place .
@Thomas Meaney: Embarrassingly exaggerated.
@Tommy Roche: your ig norance of the truth could be some of the problem…
@peter white: we built this City… we built this City on Crack and Dole.
A mayor of a village in France installed cameras and dumped back the rubbish at the door of the people who did that, YouTube it, named and shamed… Funny to watch their reactions.. no shame on them
@Dominic Leleu: The difference between the Napeonic Code and British System of Law (which is what we use here).
It’s been getting a LOT worse after the pandemic. Used to be most visible along the roads leading to the town I live in. Now it’s every couple of meters within the town. People who can’t take any responsibility and initiative just drop an item whenever it ceases to be of use to them. Two teens walking by my home a week ago. I could tell by their checked-out expressions they were going to dump their fast food packaging. They threw it into the garden of a neighbours home. It’s some achievement to leave someone else to deal with your everyday acts. We need to fast track an army of Irish mammies to walk behind these people and clip them around the ear every time they do something s-t-o-o-p-i-d.
@Numinous20111: Gas idea – Sponsor a wooden spoon!
Some Irish have zero public pride in where they live
@Peter Byrne: Not just Irish. Same happens in many countries unfortunately. And they’re always locals, to the shame if the majority of the other locals who have some pride in their place
There is a road near me where some complete and total cre tins continually dump bags of rubbish, presumably by lobbing them out the window of a car.
While I do believe in the public’s responsibility in all of this, first and foremost, a massive contribution to the littering problem was when waste collection was privatised. There was a time when our taxes paid for waste collection and people have no reason to dump their waste in public because it was guaranteed to be collected. On top of that, there were more public bins available, and they were more frequently tended to. That’s not to say there weren’t litter issues, just not as much. It is time we ditch the EU-driven mantra of privatising all utilities and services. Some people can’t afford the cost of bin and some just don’t want to pay. That drives littering, and I’m not condoning it; it’s just a fact of life There are no excuses littering but if tax money were spent on civil services instead of over inflated civil servants wages and ridiculously overpriced infrastructure, looking at you children’s hospital, we might actually have a nice little society to live in. The hLPT was supposed to be used to maintain local areas and develop amenities, yet I still pay a service charge for getting my grass cut every year, half the lights in the estate aren’t working, and a proposed playground was never built for our kids. It seems my taxes are wasted on the unemployed, migrants, government wages, and plenty of money donated to the likes of BAM and other government-funded private contracting firms.
Anyway, rant over. FFS people, put your rubbish in bins or bag it and bring it home; we’re supposed to be more evolved than the animals we once were.
@Mike Carson: Well said, except for the unemployed bit.
We are told we are at full employment.
The reality of our economic system is that unemployment is deemed a necessity. Those that manage the economy want a certain amount of unemployment at all times, because unless there was always a pool of unemployed for employers to draw from wages would increase as employers try to outdo each other to get the employees they need.
Therefore the unemployed are merely a casualty of our system.
As for the rest, the cost of government – direct as in obscene salaries for the decision making levels, and indirect for the cost of their incompetence – is appalling.
@Mike Carson: very valid points and very well put. It’s not a rant it’s the truth…
@Mike Carson: you were doing well until you showed the chip on your shoulder. Throwing rubbish has more to do with disrespect then money
Ireland ought to go the no-nonsense route that Singapore took with hefty fines that are actually enforced.
@Kieran Menon: The Irish authorities can’t even enforce basic law as it is. How would that work. I would suggest people call out others for that behavior, but the types who litter are more than likely the types that would get aggressive, and it is not worth the hassle. I remember years ago, a guard came over to me and a group of friends who were having pizzas on the prom in Galway and genuinely thanked us for putting the rubbish in bins when we were done. I got the impression that he half expected us to leave it behind. It was kind of depressing, looking back on it, to think that a mundane, simplistic act was seen as a wondrous achievement worth acknowledging. People who litter lack respect and pride for the country and others, and are usually from a certain background too. I remember getting a clip on the ear if I dropped a sweet wrapper on the ground; that’s what’s lacking today. A world gone soft on antisocial behaviour and crime in general.
@Kieran Menon: Yea, right, think judge No… and the nonsensical sentences he comes up with & you’ll soon figure out why the rules are no longer enforced with any enthusiasm.
It starts in the home, since my kids were small they were taught to bin rubbish, there is a communal green in front of my house and when the local kids are out playing some leave they’re rubbish on the ground…
Ireland is a filthy country. It’s absolutely disgusting & there is rubbish everywhere you go. There is no pleasure walking anywhere if you’re looking at dumped bags of refuse, cans, nappies etc. You can see the couldn’t care less attitude after kids matches in the local parks. Water & juice bottles and wrappers all left lying about while the parents bundle their litterbugs back into their SUVs without giving a toss about the filth they leave behind. When I was a child my parents ensured all litter went into a bag & then a bin or it was brought home. It was instilled that you pick up anything you dropped or used. Dublin is so dirty it’s shameful but unfortunately the trend for littering is everywhere now. And fly tipping that’s another level of disgusting. We are a filthy dirty nation.
@Heather Knowles: completely agree… I’m in Dublin too and it’s shocking (well not even) to see people just throw their McDonalds leftovers or whatever on the ground literally right beside a bin… like WTF?!
I lived in Melbourne. There was a bin every 150 yards. When I moved back I complained to a sitting TD about the 2 bins on my 6km walk to work and the Melbourne equivalent.
Her response…. “The Irish are a dirty nation. They should put it in their pockets”.
That quote sticks with me. She became a minister.
@Notty Tee: we can’t have bins here becoz some people put household waste into these bins to avoid bin charges…
Honestly, Ireland was tidier when we had more public bins.
It’s disgusting, and this trend has gotten so much worse in the last 20 years. Every roadside across the country seems to be littered with people chucking rubbish out of their car. I regularly see plastic bags just left on the side of country roads for the next car to split open and scatter the contents about. It can only get worse unless there is some accountability. I’ve tried to use the See It Say It app many times and I’m pretty sure Cork Co Council ignore the reports. Seems like there is one or two people working there dealing with all of the incoming reports across the whole county. Why is there no public information, or no government anti litter campaigns? It’s something politicians don’t seem to care about either. We should take a leaf out of Japan’s book. Even though everything is wrapped in plastic there, there is no litter anywhere. No bins either. If you can bring it with you, you can bring it home with you.
Mayo is clean.
See also spitting and gobbing onto the path. Absolutely disgusting!
@SerotoninWars: and pee ( or even worse) in every corner of the streets.
@SerotoninWars: Absolutely. Joggers especially guilty of this, running along and spitting away! The amount of men I see spitting when I’m out is gross.
It’s not all of Ireland though. I live in Dublin and you can’t go 6 feet without seeing litter on the ground or dog crap. But I was in Cork for a couple of days a couple of weeks ago and I never saw any litter in the city centre. You expect to see small towns with tidy towns groups being litter free but Cork as a city is really showing up Dublin
@Gearoid MacEachaidh: https://www.corkbeo.ie/news/local-news/first-hint-summer-sees-cork-29038051
@Gearoid MacEachaidh: as a Dub, I completely agree Man… even the people get nicer the further South you go.
Don’t get me started on dog waste… as a former guardian and lover, I cannot understand how people can leave their bags on the street or on trees??
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