Litterbugs ‘need to show a bit of respect’

From this week’s Galway City Tribune – Galway City Council has urged litterbugs to show some civic and personal pride – and to dispose of their rubbish responsibly.

“We’re not your mammy, going around picking up after you,” a spokesperson for the local authority told litter louts.

It comes after social media was awash with images of overflowing bins and mostly alcohol-treated litter strewn across some of the city’s beauty spots including Spanish Arch and Middle Arch in the past week.

Much of the online commentary has centered on the responsibility of the City Council to provide more bins, and to empty the existing ones more often.

A City Council spokesperson, however, said that a minority of the public who litter need to take personal responsibility.

“We try as much as we can to empty the bins as often as we can, and we are not ungrateful to the majority who act responsibly but everyone knows there is a minority of people who just don’t care and will leave anything behind them.

“Somehow they think that mammy, in the guise of a City Council worker in a high-viz, will pick up after them. Some people will say ‘well isn’t that your job?’. It is and it isn’t. Do they want us to go around asking ‘are you finished with that now, will I take that off you know?’ It’s not a restaurant,” said a Council spokesperson.

He said that additional containers are put in place at the Middle Arch and Spanish Arch, during busy times like summer.

And there are extra collections and rotas at this time of year, and when the weather is fine, for emptying the bins, he said. The city’s 50 solar-powered bins even alert the Council via text message when they’re full, or nearly full.

“But you could put bins every ten feet and still some people will litter in between. There are some people who just don’t care about anyone, and you add in cans of alcohol and they’re worse,” he said.
This is a shortened preview version of this article. To read it in full, see this week’s Galway City Tribune. You can buy a digital edition HERE.