STREET CLEANING & GRAFFITI REMOVAL
Keeping Up Appearances
We hear from Orbis, clean and clear experts who have been working with social landlords in Northern Ireland and Scotland to clean up unwanted graffiti and restore worn down buildings to their former glories.
Few people want to live on a street covered in dirt, grime and graffiti. Nor do businesses want to locate to these areas. Left unattended to, these places can spiral into serious decline and become magnets for criminal elements.
In Northern Ireland, clean and clear expert Orbis works with a social landlord client to deliver graffiti removal services to improve the look and feel of social housing areas.
It is vital to note that Orbis’s graffiti removal services do not cover Northern Ireland’s famous political murals that depict the region's past and present political and religious divisions. In Belfast alone, there are approximately 300 murals in good condition, with many more that are aging and decaying. Very few of these murals are ever removed.
However, bog-standard graffiti is relatively easy to remove – and few people protest when it is. The graffiti can be anything from tag graffiti done by wayward kids to intimidating graffiti around the political situation. The area covered can be anything from one to 50 square metres. “We generally don’t know what we’re dealing with until we arrive on the scene,” said a member of the Orbis graffiti removal team.
Brick, stone, concrete, street signs, bus shelters, pavement, wood and glass are just some of the materials that can be defaced. When considering how best to remove the paint, the type of surface has to
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be factored in. Most graffiti is also applied with spray paint. However sometimes other products are used, which can be easier or harder to remove. And the longer the graffiti has been on a surface, the more difficult it can be to remove.
Fortunately, for nine out of 10 jobs that the Orbis team encounters, a tar- based remover gel can be used. “This completely removes the offending graffiti, hopefully leaving the surface free from graffiti for a long time to come,” said the Orbis team member. However, sometimes, if the paint is ingrained in the brick, a more powerful chemical, known as a ghosting remover, might have to be used to get rid of the remaining shadow.
Removing a famous mural would be a whole different ballgame altogether. Doing so involves a much more technically complex procedure. The murals are painted, sometimes over the course of a year, onto the walls by artists and then varnished to protect them from the elements. So it would have to be sandblasted off, which has to be done by a specialist in sandblasting who has all the relevant kit and know-how. “Think having a chemical peel done on your face,” explained the Orbis team member. “Sandblasting is a similarly abrasive procedure for the brick or stone.”
Removing a mural is also an extraordinarily emotive issue and one that garners considerable press interest. In February, calls were made for the removal of a paramilitary mural
on the outskirts of Carrickfergus. The mural pictures a masked gunman beside a message saying "Better to die on your feet than live on your knees in an Irish Republic. Join the UDA". At the time, police said they were working with local authorities to progress its removal, since it was close to a primary school, community centre and churches in the area.
And in recent years, some of the most militant and threatening wall murals, often depicting gunmen, on the notorious Falls Road have been replaced as part of a project to replace military material with more
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