Cig Butt Campaign

Cigarette butts continue to be Ireland’s biggest litter scourge accounting for almost half of discarded waste according to recent research by the National Litter Pollution Monitoring system.  The volunteers with Dromiskin Tidy Towns would certainly agree with this analysis given the number of butts collected on daily litter patrols - unbelievably 330 butts were collected within the core village area on one daily litter pick recently with in excess of 200 collected most days.

Quite often cigarette butts are not considered by smokers to be litter and are also assumed to be biodegradable but this is not the case.  Cigarette butts consist of a plastic called cellulose acetate and can remain in the environment for very long periods of time in the form of micro plastics.  When ingested, the hazardous chemicals in micro plastics present threats to wildlife including birds and plants.  Discarded butts can also leach toxic chemicals into the environment and contaminate our water supplies. 

Dromiskin is pleased to be a participant in Louth’s Vote with your Butt campaign which was officially launched in the village by the Chairperson of Louth County Council, Councillor Paula Butterly and the Tidy Towns Committee was delighted to also be joined by Cllrs Marianne Butler, Kevin Meenan and Robert Nash in support of this awareness raising initiative.

The Butt Box will ask smokers to dispose of their butts while voting for their preferred public space - Dromiskin Heritage Park or Ginnety’s Pond. It will be interesting to see if the initiative will lead to a reduction in cigarette butt litter as it has been proven to do elsewhere in the country.  Pat Mulligan, Chairman, Dromiskin Tidy Towns commented “some people may see the initiative as somewhat gimmicky but if it is a gimmick that creates awareness and encourages smokers to dispose of their butts in a proper manner then it is an initiative certainly worth supporting.  Our volunteers find litter control one of the most frustrating and repetitive elements of our work programme and one that really shouldn’t take up so much time if people disposed of litter properly as required by the law”

Councillor Paula Butterly paid tribute to Dromiskin Tidy Towns and all the tidy towns volunteers in the county who are relentless in their efforts to get to grips with litter despite the ongoing and time consuming challenges faced on a daily basis.

Dromiskin Tidy Towns would like to highlight that cigarette butts are litter and offences are subject to an on the spot fine of €150.

Dromiskin Delivers for National Spring Clean 2024!

Getting to grips with litter and illegal dumping is an ongoing battle and one that often has to be fought by volunteers as part of annual Tidy Towns programmes of work. Such was the case in Dromiskin when two significant spring clean events were held to get the village and the wider community sparkling.

The first clean up as we saw previously was an evening event in collaboration with the local Primary School, St Peter’s NS, when 29 young litter patrollers from 5th and 6th Classes divided into four groups each with two adult leaders and covered roads that looped around the village, removing litter from roadside verges and footpaths. 

The second event on Sunday 21 April covered a larger area and saw 18 teams taking to the highways and byways of the wider community on Sunday morning to clean assigned stretches of road. Alcohol related litter was prevalent on all routes while many of the hardy volunteers also had to deal with much larger items including tyres, traffic cones and an oil drum. Many of these rural roads feature gripes where waste materials were deposited out of sight but were removed as part of this major clean up. The number of bags collected between the two events filled a large skip provided by Louth County Council and clearly highlighted the extent of the litter problem that had to be dealt with. While the community was sparkling following all the hard work there is little doubt that it won’t stay litter free for long as people continually discard litter without any thought for the impact this has on the local environment.

Spring Cleaning our Community

What a great turnout for our first National Spring Clean event which was a joint initiative with St Peter’s NS.  Pupils from 5th and 6th Class gave up an hour of their time on Wednesday evening and, with two adult supervisors per team, broke into four teams to do a litter blitz on roads leading to the village centre. The young litter patrollers were shocked at the amount of cigarette butts and alcohol related litter collected but did a great job filling many bags and leaving roadside verges litter free. Thank you to Ms Lynch and to the senior class teachers for all their help and enthusiasm.