Our history

The charity Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful traces its roots back to 1954 when the Women’s Institute passed a resolution at its AGM to start an anti-litter campaign. Over the years many successful and memorable campaigns were supported by celebrities of the day, including pop stars like ABBA, entertainers like Morecambe and Wise, and many more. In 1969, the iconic ‘Tidyman’ logo began to appear on bins and packaging.

In 2000 TIDY Northern Ireland was created when the Keep Britain Tidy group devolved into the 4 regions of the UK.

The organisation gained independent full membership of the Foundation for Environmental Education in 2009, allowing it to run various programmes such as Blue Flag, Eco-Schools and Young Reporters for the Environment.

In 2013 Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful helped establish (and joined) the European Litter Prevention Association, which seeks to build a European wide response to the littering behaviour.

In February 2014 we re-branded to become Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful. The new name better reflects the diversity of our work now and, importantly, our future high aspirations. We also feel it is a stronger rallying call for people to take action to improve the places they live in; the places they love. We believe that the solution will focus on building a civic pride movement to build on the good will of the majority of people who want to create a better place to live and work and a better place for people to visit.