Letterkenny named eighth cleanest town in 2025 IBAL litter rankings

Letterkenny has been named the eighth cleanest town in the latest litter survey by business group Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL).

Letterkenny has improved to ‘cleaner than European norms’, and climbed from 13th to 8th spot in the ranking of 40 towns and cities. 

The An Taisce report for Letterkenny stated: “An excellent result for Letterkenny, one of its best ever. Seven out of the ten sites got the top litter grade - it is this high number of Grade A sites which sets the top towns apart. 

“These sites included a couple of the approach roads, the residential area of St. Eunan’s Terrace, Letterkenny Shopping Centre and Main Street, Upper - the latter was enhanced with some lovely wooden seating/ large wooden planter boxes and ‘olde’ style street lamps. Ballymacool Town Park is a real gem - beautifully presented and maintained, with a complete lack of litter throughout. The Recycle Facility at Aura Leisure Centre was the only heavily littered site.”

Sligo finished atop the IBAL table for the first time in a study which showed that city areas in particular cleaned up in 2025.

The number of towns deemed clean last year rose to 28, with Sligo finishing ahead of Leixlip, Westport and Monaghan. An Taisce, who conducts the surveys on behalf of IBAL, lauded the winning town for its consistently strong performance in recent years.

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Waterford reclaimed its customary accolade of Ireland’s cleanest city, ahead of Galway. Cork City Centre was also clean. While urban areas still dominate the lower reaches of the rankings, 10 of the 13 surveyed showed an improvement in cleanliness in 2025. Galvone in Limerick achieved clean status for the first time, having been branded “seriously littered” in past years. 

“The most pleasing finding of 2025 was the progress made in socially disadvantaged areas,” explained Mr Conor Horgan. “Even areas at the foot of our rankings have significantly lower litter levels than a year ago. Dublin City Centre and North Inner City, while still littered, are cases in point. The investment being made by Dublin City Council seems to be already paying fruit, and we are set to see further progress in 2026 if the Council comes good on its promise of replacing bags with bins across the city. This could be a landmark year in the fight against litter.” 

There was a notable fall-off in the number of sites with large accumulations of litter or subject to dumping. “This continues a very welcome trend we’ve seen in recent surveys and credit must go to local authorities for ridding our environment of these litter blackspots,” comments Mr Horgan. This was the first IBAL survey where no bottle bank was deemed a litter blackspot.

The survey revealed that the Deposit Return Scheme continues to have a positive impact on the cleanliness of our towns and cities, with a 10 per cent drop in the prevalence of cans and plastic bottles compared to the previous year. These two types of litter are now 60 per cent less common than when the scheme was introduced in early 2024. 

Coffee cups remained one of the most commonly found forms of litter and was evident in one fifth of all sites surveyed. The prevalence of disposable vapes, which are set to be outlawed over the course of 2026, was unchanged.