Salthill — one of the mainstays of the tourism industry in Galway — has slipped to a category of ‘moderately littered’ in an annual survey of coasts and inland waterways.

Dog’s Bay beach near Roundstone was again found again to be ‘littered’ — one of only three in the country — according to the findings of the survey by business group Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL).

Lough Rea lake in Loughrea was the only one of the three Galway area surveyed to get the top classification of ‘clean to European standards’.

Nationally, 33 beaches, harbours, rivers and their immediate environs were monitored by An Taisce on behalf of IBAL in June and July.

A total of 17 were deemed ‘clean’, a 50% rise on the previous survey, while the number of areas branded ’littered’ fell from 11 to just 3. Again, no area was placed in the lowest category ‘heavily littered’.

The An Taisce report for Lough Rea said that it was “an exceptionally freshly presented and maintained environment, with almost all aspects in very good order — there was a virtual absence of litter throughout”.

It added: “There were no visible items within the water, just the occasional land-based fast-food wrappers and sweet papers. Remarkably, there were no cigarette butts noted.”

On Dog’s Bay, the An Taisce report said that  while the main beach area was generally free of typical litter, the real litter issue was in the car parking area, around the Portaloos, the path leading along the rocks and at the fencing set up to protect the sand-dunes.

“The latter harboured what would appear to be wind-borne items, while the area to the rear of the Portaloos had bags of rubbish.”

Clothing, towels and shoes were found scattered both in the car park and along the shoreline, and behind the wall of the car park there was evidence of a camp-fire.

Fishing related items such as crates and ropes were present along the path by the rocks, along with some food related litter like coffee cups.

Dealing with its findings in Salthill, An Taisce said that the regular bin units with cigarette butt disposal facilities and recycling units were freshly presented

“The main litter items were significant levels of cigarette butts, with lower levels of bottle caps (trapped in the sand) cans (both mineral and alcohol), utensils (both plastic and wooden), sweet wrappers and fishing related items included lines / nets / ropes — these were primarily along the beach area.”

Conor Horgan of IBAL said that overall, this was by far the most favourable result they had seen in eight years of coastal surveys.

Cigarette butts, sweet papers, fast food wrappers were the most commonly found litter items — and coffee cup litter was found in 42% of the sites surveyed.

Next month’s Big Beach Clean Up is an annual call to action organised by An Taisce’s Clean Coasts, which is expected to attract over 600 groups and 15,000 volunteers nationwide to the country’s beaches over a single weekend, from September 19-21.

Pictured: Dog’s Bay beach: Again classified as ‘littered’.