The Parents’ Council of Scoil Réalt na Mara will hold their annual secondhand book sale on Sunday, June 14 at the main entrance to St. Patrick’s Church, Strand Street, after 9am mass.
You help the cause and put your old paperbacks to good use by donating them to the sale. To recycle your redundant tomes contact:
Caroline Delaney on 087 907 7152
or Annette Norgrove on 086 108 1701 anytime before the sale.
Gardening was one of the topics that interested everyone at the recent Sustainable Skerries Transition Town public meeting. With that in mind, here is the latest installment from the Irish Times’ Urban Farmer by Fionnula Fallon. This installment gives the low down on how to grow the globe artichoke, detailing how artichokes are grown in the OPW’s walled garden in the Phoenix Park. Learn the art of DIY artichokes here.
The Sustainable Skerries Transition Town Initiative held its first public meeting in the Old School House on Wednesday, June 3. We’d like to thank everyone who attended for coming along and sharing their thoughts and ideas. As initial meetings go, it was pretty productive.
The main focus of the group has been split into four dedicated areas.
1. Gardening: including allotments, community gardening and vegetable growing.
2. Sustainable Energy and Energy Efficiency.
3. Skillsharing, L.E.T.S. & Recycling.
4. General upkeep of the town and its natural amenities.
If you missed the meeting and would like to get involved with any of the above areas, or suggest some others, please get in touch by dropping us a line at the blog.
Skerries News has come up with an innovative idea to keep Skerries’ beaches clean, safe and looking great. Stretches of the beach, from the Rugby Club all the way round to Kelly’s Bay, will be assigned to local clubs, organisations, scout troupes and families. Skerries News will provide bags & litter grabbers and highlight who is responsible for each stretch of beach. They’ll also hold a beachfront barbecue at the end of each season, where certificates and prizes will be given out. All you have to do is pick your patch and keep it clean.
To sign up for the scheme you can contact Skerries News here. Or you can contact them directly on 01 849 0629.
Following its succesful launch event, The Sustainable Skerries Initiative is holding a public meeting for members of the community to discuss immediate projects in Room 7, The Old Schoolhouse, Wednesday, June 3, at 8.30pm.
Attention now turns to the creation of working groups to develop specific local enterprises such as local allotments, waste education and increased home energy efficiency. The Sustainable Skerries Initiative is also calling on pre-existing local groups who are engaged in anctivities such as gardening or cycling to get involved.
We’re hoping many of the people who attended the launch event will come to the meeting in the Old Schoolhouse. But all newcomers are welcome too. See you there, hopefully.
A suburb of the German city of Freiburg is actively discouraging driving to create a car free, or at least, car reduced community.
70% of families in the town of Vauban don’t own cars, and 57% sold a car to move there. Through smart planning, a ban on on-street parking and excellent public transport, Vauban is in the van of this new trend away from sprawling suburban towns. You can read more about it here.
Codema, a sustainable energy agency that advises local authorities and individuals, has launched a new website aimed at anyone who wants to join with their neighbours to improve the energy efficiency of their homes. Energy Smart Communities offers advice and project management for those who are prepared to join together into clusters of homeowners. The basic concept is that coming together into “clusters” increases collective buying power and energy efficiency. You can read all about it here.
The Skerries Cycling Initiative (SCI) is leading a FUN CYCLE to Lusk on Saturday, May 23rd, weather permitting!
The show gets on the road in the Mill Car Park at 12 noon. From there riders will travel around Skerries, out the Baldungan Road, down to Lusk and back again. If there are sufficient numbers and stewards to meet Health & Safety requirements, the riders will divide into two groups : adult/competent riders who will proceed directly to Lusk and a Family/novice rider group, which will travel more slowly, with stops along the way.
Please ensure that your bike is in full working order. Children must be accompanied by a competent parent or adult.
Anyone wishing to volunteer to be a steward, please contact Ray Ryan of the Skerries Cycling Initiative on 01 8494171.
Thursday’s Irish Times featured an interesting article on the thrifty art of refurbishing and reusing domestic odds and end, as practiced by the Wombles. Craftspeople and home professionals have responded to the recession by offering DIY classes for at reasonable prices.
The feature details the interior designers, fashion designers and upholsterers who are offering classes screen printing, making your own cushions, covers and curtains plus a range of other tips. If you’re interested in becoming as prudent as the denizens of Wimbledon Common, you can read the article here.
Plus, If anyone knows any craftspeople offering similar classes in the Fingal area, let us know and we’ll post it on the Sustainable Skerries Blog.
How much energy does searching the internet use? That’s the question that Google addressed recently on its own blog. Their figures compare the amount of carbon dioxide emitted each time a person does a Google search with other activities, like making a cheeseburger or a glass of orange juice.
Reports earlier in the year indicated that performing two Google searches could generate the same amount of CO2 as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea. If Google is to be believed, it seems their search engine is more energy efficient than that. You can read all about it here.
Sustainable Skerries 