Kilcullen Community 4 Climate Action

The Circular Economy: Guest Post by Ellen Cowley What is the Circular Economy? The circular economy is a model of production and consumption. It is a method of looking at our economy and the life cycle of products with the environment in mind. It encourages reducing, reusing, recycling, repurposing, repairing and sharing resources.  How it all started  The idea of the circular economy was first proposed by Allen Kneese in his book “The Economics of Natural Resources” (1988). In 2015, the EU made the first Circular Economy Action Plan. Their aim was to keep the lifecycle of a product infinite, so that instead of ending up in landfill, it would stay in use for as long as possible. They hoped that by introducing incentives for both the economy and the environment, it would get people on board. The Circular Economy and Climate Change   The transition to renewable energy is not sufficient on its own to tackle climate change. To tackle 45% of emissions which come from indu...

Fast Fashion Guest post by Ellen Cowley Introduction In this article I discuss fast fashion: what is it, why it is a problem and how can we help. Fast fashion is driven by economic factors. Unfortunately it can have negative consequences for the environment and for society. Why is it a problem? Fast fashion is inexpensive clothing produced rapidly by mass-market retailers in response to the latest tends. Mass-market retailers are popular cheap clothing brands in developed countries. They respond to the demand of the people or the trends. They produce clothing made of very poor materials, very quickly and cheaply to meet the demand of consumers. To make this clothing cheap for the consumer, it needs to be cheap to make for retailers. This is not possible in developed countries where there are strict laws in place to protect worker’s rights, such as minimum wage, paid holidays and safety standards. Retailers go to developing countries, such as Vietnam, to make their clothing where there ...

  How the Food we Eat Impacts the Planet  The following is the first of a series of articles written by Ellen Cowley. We are very happy to have Ellen joining us for a short while, working on articles to raise awareness about climate action.  Our group has always focused on the many ways that we can care for the planet and we are really pleased to have Ellen’s contribution.  We’ll let Ellen introduce herself below and we hope that you enjoy the articles! Hi, my name is Ellen and I am in transition year (TY) in St. Mary’s College Naas. In TY we do the Gaisce programme, where you receive an award for doing 13 weeks of physical recreation, 13 weeks of community service and 13 weeks of a personal skill and at the end an extra 13 weeks of your preferred element. For my community service element of Gaisce I’m delighted to be working with Kilcullen Climate Action Group. I will be writing articles about several different topics and how they impact our climate, our planet and...

  So what is the Circular Economy?  (Image by Freepik) Put simply, it's based around the idea that we move from a linear model of production and consumption, where we produce, buy, use and discard, to a more circular and sustainable process where we reuse, repair, share, and essentially try to extend the lifespan of products. The move towards a more circular economy involves lots of different parts of society, like industry, technology, business, etc. but it's also something that we can all incorporate into our own lives. And that's where Treasure Town comes in!  Our aim is to show all the 'treasure' that is around us in our local area and to encourage people to think of reusing and repairing, or swapping and sharing, rather than buying completely new products.  There are lots of reasons to try and reduce the amount of new things we buy - every product that is completely new has incorporated materials and resources (like water or energy usage) which contribute to ca...

We were delighted to welcome a varied group of people to our recent event ‘Re-imagining Community Climate Action’ which was held in Kilcullen library on the 1 st March.  Davie Philip and Oscar Mooney from Cultivate facilitated the workshop and it kicked off with us discussing in pairs what our concerns for the world were.  Naturally climate was at the forefront of topics that came up, with many people feeling that we are not doing enough to prepare for future climate events. Then Davie spoke about the Erasmus funded ‘Community Climate Coaches’ program. This program is developing a system to train, support and enable community facilitators, mentors, and animators across Europe.   Key to the program is an integration of all the different strands of community, encompassing climate action, social justice, just transition and a more holistic look at how we work together as communities. Oscar spoke about Just Transition, which is a term originating with the Labour movemen...

 Treasure Town - A Circular Economy Fun Event All our members have been organising away in the background and it's hard to believe our event is almost upon us! The idea of Treasure Town is to celebrate all the wonderful things around us and to demonstrate the idea of the circular economy in a fun and engaging way. So much of our consumerist society drives us to constantly purchasing new things. And of course those new things, more often than not, will eventually end up in landfill. Apart from the emissions problem with landfill sites, we have to think about all the resources that have gone into making that new item you have purchased. So, ideally, we all need to think of cutting down buying new items - the principle of 'refuse' is always the first of the Reduce, Reuse, Recyle model of waste reduction. But perhaps that might make life seem a little dull at times - and Treasure Town is the ideal antidote to that! We're going to show all the ways that you can get 'new...