Sustainability ideas at Tidy Towns conference

Photo: Peter Heeling.

'Swap boxes' for items too good to throw away, and a repairs directory were among the ideas suggested at a recent conference for Tidy Towns groups, held in Trim, writes Brian Byrne.

The meeting was attended by Noel Clare and Ray Kelly on behalf of Kilcullen Tidy Towns, and during the most recent meeting of Kilcullen Community Action they outlined some of what they'd learned.

The 'Swop boxes' was one of the suggestions made during the Sustainability module at the conference. The idea was that they could be done on a theme, such as for football boots. Particularly for children, it could give another 'life' to boots which had been outgrown but were otherwise sound.

"Another idea was a Local Repair Directory," Ray Kelly said. "Does anybody know a TV repairman, for instance? Rather than dumping things just because they've broken down, they could be fixed."

Antoinette Buckley said that sounded like a service available in Naas, through the Mens Shed.

Another suggestion reported from the meeting was to have an egg-timer in home showers, with explicit instructions that the shower was exited when it beeped.

"The whole theme was that people's behaviours in sustainability could be changed over a number of years," Ray Kelly said.

The meeting also heard that Kildare County Council had agreed to sponsor Kilcullen's application to become a Sustainable Energy Community under the SEAI programme.

Noel Clare said this means the town didn't have to raise substantial funding in advance of the application, and that an expert from the SEAI would be assigned to Kilcullen to help with the project.

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