A Kildare town is second cleanest in Ireland - survey

The latest litter survey by business group Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL) of shows Leixlip is cleaner than European norms, in runner-up spot in the ranking of 40 towns and cities.

Former winner Naas, however, has slipped to 13th. 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 An Taisce report for Leixlip stated:
An excellent result for Leixlip – well done to all concerned. As a general observation, there was plenty of evidence of Tidy Town activity throughout Leixlip, not just the specific sites visited for the purposes of the IBAL survey – examples included lovely planting and colourful ‘traffic light box’ type art, often in keeping with themes relating to the town itself. With so many
top ranking sites, there were a few which deserve special mention: The Royal Canal Greenway (From Louisa Bridge Station to Fishing Post No. 19) is a beautifully presented environment which has some lovely features and was excellent with regards to litter. Clearly a very careful eye is kept on the various closed down / vacant / derelict sites along the Main Street as the
entire stretch was spotless. The town centre Car Park has some lovely features – an abundance of colourful hanging baskets and some excellent visitor information signage.

The An Taisce report for Naas stated:
After a couple of years of great success in the IBAL survey, Naas has slipped somewhat – the presence of a heavily littered site will typically bring down a town’s overall ranking. This was at a derelict site at the corner of Corban's Lane & Fairgreen Street – it wasn’t just littered, but subject to neglect and abuse – and most likely didn’t get into this state overnight. Top ranking
sites in Naas included North Main St, the residential area of Morell Dale and the waterside environment at ‘The Harbour’ – all elements were in very good order, and it was very much deserving of the top litter grade. There were a number of moderately littered sites, among them Lock Bui – this was mostly brought about due to the overflowing wheely bins and the
associated tearing of refuse sacks by wildlife.

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

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,” explains Mr 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% drop in the prevalence of cans and plastic bottles compared to the previous year. These two types of litter
are now 60% 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. “A real disappointment in a generally positive year has been the likely collapse of coffee cup schemes in towns such as Killarney,” says Mr Horgan. “It is apparent that such schemes will only work with statutory backing. As our data today bears out, without Government intervention coffee cups will remain an unsightly and entirely unnecessary blot on the landscape across our towns. The prevarication from Government on the issue is striking - a levy was promised all of four years ago – and sends out a worrying signal. Weaning ourselves off single-use coffee cups should not be such a big deal.”

The prevalence of disposable vapes, which are set to be outlawed over the course of 2026, was unchanged.