TIDY Northern Ireland
TIDY Northern Ireland is a non-profit environmental organisation that runs the "Keep Northern Ireland Tidy Campaign", and manages a number of local environmental quality programmes such as Blue Flag, Seaside Awards, Green Coast Awards, Borough Cleanliness Survey, Northern Ireland Litter Survey, BIG Spring Clean, Coast Care, River Care and Lough Care, TIDY Business, Young Reporters on the Environment and Eco-Schools. Many of these programmes also operate beyond Northern Ireland.
Overview
TIDY Northern Ireland produces information on the cleanliness of Northern Ireland that is used to direct resources to prominent environmental quality issues. TIDY Northern Ireland has conducted campaigns and public information on litter including car litter, gum deposition, drug related litter, fast food litter, and youth litter. They have also campaigned on a number of other anti-social behaviour issues such as fly-tipping, dog fouling and neighbourhood noise. TIDY Northern Ireland endorses the government’s wider aim to deliver sustainable development. This work falls into three main areas: campaigning to get public action, the delivery of programmes to enable partners to deliver action in the community and the production of research and survey results to measure the quality of the local environment.
There are various key factors to the continuing development of TIDY Northern Ireland’s activities. The growing momentum of the sustainable development agenda, and its links to local environmental quality and the anti-social behaviour agenda, demonstrating the connection, impact and benefits of high quality local environments. The development of civic pride is seen as a key requirement of long term success in driving down the spiralling costs of street cleansing which are approaching £40m and rising, despite increasing financial constraints faced by councils.
One of TIDY Northern Ireland’s primary aims is to enable the public and private sector agencies to deliver more effectively on Local Environmental Quality (LEQ), and relate it to the needs of their community. Much of their work is pertinent to Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment (NI) Act 2011, The Litter (NI) Order 1994 and The Waste and Contaminated Land (NI) Order 1997 with more recently added amendments.
They aim to achieve their objectives by:
- enabling others to improve, maintain and own their local environment
- encouraging the proper disposal and recycling of material, which could become litter
- deterring gum deposition
- deterring graffiti, fly posting, vandalism, dog fouling, anti-social behaviour and other activities that have a negative impact of the quality of our local environment
As part of this work, they help local authorities and other agencies to deliver better local environmental services, which are tailored to meet the differing needs of the communities that they serve.