Editorial: Vaping-related litter poses new litter challenge for Kilkenny

Kilkenny is currently in the middle of preparing a new litter management plan, with the process well under way.

To be fair to Kilkenny County Council — and to the many volunteers in our communities — a huge amount of time and resources go into combating litter here, and making sure we maintain our reputation as one of Ireland’s tidiest places.

The latest data from the council tell us that litter, and the nature of litter, has changed greatly in recent years. Last week, we highlighted the prevalence of the scourge of dog fouling, but there are a number of other areas where new trends and issues have emerged.

CCTV has become an important tool in catching increasingly-wary offenders, but there remains some grey area as regards how footage can be viewed and used in tandem with people’s right to privacy and data protection.

Local representatives regularly call for ‘naming and shaming’ of offenders, but it is only when perpetrators are brought before the courts and convicted with media present that these people can legally be named.
Shockingly, but perhaps unsurprisingly for some, the council says that an extraordinary proportion of the litter they are seeing is smoking/vaping related. It has gone from around 64% to 91%.

The stickers on bins, and the plastic disposable products are a blight on nature. Brightly-coloured vapes discarded around public areas have the potential to be picked up by young children or ingested by pets, laneways are littered with discarded packaging.

There is a wider issue here of how these products are being marketed and sold. In many cases, in filling stations where before cigarettes were on display behind the counter (since outlawed) and then alcoholic spirits (no longer allowed to be openly on display), the vape industry has taken over.

On any given day, young students in their school uniforms can been seen vaping and visiting shops that sell these products.
A much wider conversation is needed on where we go from here to tackle this modern problem.