Awareness and Education the Key to Anti-Litter Drive

The publication of Sligo County Council’s new Draft Litter Management Plan is a major step in the Local Authority’s ongoing commitment to a litter-free environment for towns and villages.

The basic objective of the plan is to improve the litter status of County Sligo, and the plan sets out how this objective can be achieved.

Sligo’s dependence on tourism highlights the importance of the environment as an issue for all our citizens, and the measures set out in the four year plan (2007-2010) will ensure a clean environment remains top of the agenda.

A wide range of initiatives are identified in the plan:

• Awareness and education programmes
• Support and assistance of voluntary action
• Enforcement of relevant legislation
• Prevention and control measures
• Linking with national initiatives

Sligo County Council’s active engagement with the county’s 400 voluntary groups is sees as a pivotal factor in the anti-litter campaign. The environment is a core consideration for many communities, and the Council has a number of ways of providing tangible support and encouragement to these groups:

• Targeting litter black spots
• Encourage regular clean-ups
• Provide financial and other supports
• Publicise the efforts of voluntary groups.

While the Council’s Environment section devote considerable resources to educational programmes, enforcement measures are also a key element of the plan. Litter wardens investigate all complaints, and conduct regular and widespread litter patrols around the county. Litter offenders face the reality of on the spot fines and prosecutions, and can be a costly affair for someone who is convicted of an offence.

According to John McHugh, Senior Engineer, Environment, the general public are becoming noticeably less tolerant of litter offenders. ‘We find the vast majority of people take enormous pride in their environment, and this is reflected in the number of groups participating in clean-up campaigns. When people devote so much time and energy into their local community, they will not tolerate the casual littering of their area. We depend to a great extent on the local communities in our drive against litter offenders, and I feel with their continued co-operation, we can make great strides in tackling the problem of litter in our county.’