The amount of money spent cleaning up annually after Northern Ireland's litter louts could be used to pay the wages of an additional 1,400 nurses or construct five new schools every year.

At a time when the government are looking to implement spending cuts across vital sectors including health and education, the province's 26 councils are being forced into spending almost £30 million every year trying to clean up the mess left behind by careless litterers.

"When people throw litter on the ground, they might as well be throwing away five pound notes," said TIDY Northern Ireland Chief Executive Dr Ian Humphreys. "It is staggering to think about the huge sums of money that councils have to spend just because people can't be bothered to dispose of their rubbish in the correct manner, and the actions of these people are hitting all of us in the pocket, hiking up our rates at a time when people need every penny."

The annual spend on cleaning litter off the streets varies considerably from one council area to another, with the huge influx of commuters and tourists into Belfast helping place it firmly at the top of the expenditure table. The five biggest spenders per head of population are completed by Moyle, Craigavon, Cookstown and Derry councils.

Provision of a regular and efficient street cleaning service accounts for much of the expenditure, but anti-litter charity TIDY Northern Ireland is keen for councils to also focus on stopping the problem at its source. Dr Humphreys continued, "If councils solely spend money on picking up litter then the problem will never be solved. It's not about how much money we spend but how well we spend it, and TIDY Northern Ireland is encouraging councils to think about addressing the root of the problem and dedicating a significant proportion of those millions towards education, campaigns, enforcement and public engagement. Savings can also be made if councils work together to put across a province wide message that pools resources instead of every borough working individually to achieve the same goal, but ultimately the only way we are going to make long term significant savings is if we stop people dropping litter in the first place."

In a bid to establish collaboration between council districts, TIDY Northern Ireland hosted Northern Ireland's inaugural Litter Summit. Councils from across the province joined with both local and guest speakers from England, Scotland, and the Republic of Ireland to share ideas and experiences and hopefully take another step forward in the ongoing battle against the litter louts. See the Litter Summit pages for more information and presentation downloads.

Councils' Annual Street Cleansing Expenditure