Many of Ireland‘s coastal towns and beaches demonstrate careful maintenance and community engagement when it comes to litter management, while others fall short, the 2025 IBAL Coastal Litter Survey, carried out alongside An Taisce, has found.
The best-performing locations, in other words those that were deemed ‘clean to European norms’, included Bray, Brittas Bay, Bundoran, Castletownbere, Cork Harbour – Blackrock Castle, Curracloe, Dun Laoghaire, Keem, Killiney, Killybegs, Loughrea, Mountshannon, Old Head, Portmarnock, Skerries, Strandhill, and Tramore.
Public engagement
Some locations were praised for their public engagement initiatives – in Bray and Bundoran, for example, the ‘3 For the Sea’ campaign encourages the public to pick up three pieces of plastic while walking along the beach, while Cork Harbour – Blackrock Castle invites people to join the ‘Blackrock Clean Up’ on every second Saturday of the month.
Most of the best-performing locations also had designated bins for dog poop, and campaigns to encourage members of the public to clean up their cigarette butts.
Littered locations
Moderately littered sites included Annesley Bridge, Ballybunion, Ballinacurra, Bantry, Clogherhead, Doolin, Dungarvan, Grand Canal Dock, Kilmore Quay, Kinsale, Lahinch, Portmagee, and Salthill. At sites such as Ballybunion, litter was often trapped in tidal zones, meaning that despite the presence of a ‘mechanical cleaning device’, not all the litter could be reached.
The survey classified Dingle, Dog’s Bay, and White Bay as ‘littered’, in other words boasting significant amounts of land- and water-based litter. White Bay, in particular, was ‘not just casually littered but subject to dumping’, with camping remnants and accumulated fishing materials left behind, while Dog’s Bay faced littering near parking and dune-protection areas.
In Dingle, meanwhile, one of the country’s most popular tourist spots, a shortage of litter bins meant that ‘any light land-based litter can quickly make its way into the water with a large gust of wind’. Read more here.
