Recycled paper produces 73% less air pollution than if it was made from raw materials. Producing plastic products from recycled plastics reduces energy requirements by 66%. One recycled drink can save 20 times more energy and emissions than making the can from new materials.  Learn how to recycle effectively: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

Carbon offsetting helps to combat global climate change as well as caring for local communities. Often providing much-needed employment, health improvement, biodiversity and broad social benefits to impoverished communities. Best practice is to offset through gold standard projects that are aimed at carbon emission reduction and avoidance. It’s more than just planting trees, it’s better when your offset aids sustainable projects that are community-based reductions is CO2 through energy efficiency or renewable energy generation projects: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

Where it makes sense, see if you can generate some of your electricity yourself. There are supports for this from the SEAI, and you can achieve good pay-back periods. But domestic roof-top photo-voltaic panels (PV) are just one of many steps we should take to de-carbon our power needs. And remember there are co-operative and community scale renewable electricity generation opportunities too: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

There are many ways that you and your neighbours can multiply their sustainability impacts by coming together. Learn from other communities who have established co-ops and are making massive changes to their sustainability: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

In the long run it pays off, and is much more sustainable (ordinary batteries are hard to recycle), but it can be expensive initially. So make a deal with yourself that you’ll convert 1 battery powered device per month (costing about €12 for 4 AAs) to rechargeable batteries and so spread the payout over time: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

As dieticians increasingly focus on the environment, they’re finding that what’s better for the earth is usually also better for the body: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

Glass is 100% recyclable and can be recycled endlessly without loss in quality or purity – something few food and beverage packaging options can claim. Over a ton of natural resources are saved for every ton of glass recycled. Energy costs drop about 2-3% for every 10% recycled glass used in the manufacturing process of fresh glass. One ton of carbon dioxide is reduced for every six tons of recycled container glass used in the manufacturing process: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

It could be on a more formal social co-operation basis like in Dublin’s ‘The Library of Things’, or it could even just be as simple as suggesting to your friends and neighbours that there’s no need for you all to buy an expensive rarely used item and that you could just share one around to who needs it: a kind of meithil of tools or objects: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

Our food – from what we eat to how it is grown – accounts for more carbon emissions than transport and yet staple crops will be hit hard by global warming: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

Get your community together around the issue of sustainability there are’s lots of supports available: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

Although we don’t pay for water directly (let’s not go there) using water comes with environmental impacts. Cutting down on our need of water is an important sustainability action – yes, we need to drink and wash just as much as ever, but there are lots of ways we can reduce our need to use water: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

About 2,900 litres of water are necessary to make a 250 g cotton T-shirt; a pair of jeans weighing 1 kg requires 11,800 litres: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

There is a close connection between the way we make, sell and buy clothes and fashion and ethical sustainability. There’s lots to explore and many ways to make an impact. But simply put: if that item of clothing you’re thinking of buying new costs less that you thought it could – someone else is paying the difference: the farmer supplier, the garment maker, or the environment damaged by unsustainable agricultural or industrial practices: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

Using LEDs as a replacement for incandescent bulbs can, over the typical LED lifespan will save you as much as €150 in electricity costs and about €15 in bulb costs. Not to mention the time avoided tottering on a ladder as you change incandescent bulb after incandescent bulb. For CFL, there’s less euro and time saved, but LEDs are the only way to go – especially in light quality: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

Ok, you don’t have to get rid of it, just don’t use it for drying clothes. It’s insanely power hungry. It is much more sustainably to make use of the cheaper solar powered alternative: the washing line. And yes this works in Connemara as well as it does in Cabra and costs nothing but a bit of organisation and an eye on the clouds (much easier since THIS was invented). We’ll write a full post on this again, but the cost of 1 washing line is €2.99. This compares over 1 year*for a standard Tumble dryer: 1496.5 kWh costing approximately €254.00,  and avoiding 523.775 kgs of carbon. Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

*Based on my personal experience of a family of 4 needing one washing machine load per day.

Keep organic matter out of  your municipal/community waste bins. This prevents methane emissions in landfills, and reduces the weight of your non-recycle (land filled) bin meaning it’s cheaper. It also means that you don’t need your land fill bin emptied as much, because it’s contents are more inert and less odorous. At the same time, you’re improving the soil quality of your own space and avoiding non-sustainable soil conditioners and fertilisers (like peat): Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

According to Re-dress.ie, 225,000 tonnes of textile waste are disposed of in Ireland each year. It’s bad news for the environment whether that is organic waste (wool or cotton) or whether it’s synthetic containing plastic micro-fibres: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

Take a leaf out of An Meithil Rothair’s book to see how you can avoid waste and make things new and wonderful again through community co-operation: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

There are bargains to be had in vintage and second hand charity shops – where do these bargains come from if not from people like you donating them. Just make sure that the organization you donate to do not engage in product dumping where it ends up displacing employment in developing countries: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

There are millions of upcycling tips available on the web – good, bad and ugly. But all creative: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

Production of textiles uses a lot of energy and disposal impacts on sustainability. Look into which textiles you use and how they can be disposed of without damaging the local environment: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

There’s a lot to sustainability, including contributing to the future social and economic health of local communities. Shopping local instead of in the large multinationals and multiples increases the power of your spend in supporting local jobs and the economy: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

Gardens can play a great role in promoting sustainability – micro-gardens are just as important as large community spaces: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

Simple: growing food near by is more sustainable. This though isn’t just about you: get your council to donate land for a community garden. It’s been done throughout Ireland, so most councils will be open to the idea: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

Single-use items are disastrous for sustainability – they can be avoided by just a tiny bit of planning (in the case of coffee cups and water bottles) or just by saying you don’t want them (straws, plastic cutlery…) Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

Why not buy products that are repairable or that last so that they don’t need to be disposed of: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

There are lots of ways to make your home more energy efficient and comfortable. Try some of our tips to save energy and you’ll reduce your energy consumption and bills. The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland has plenty of excellent ideas as well as a wide range of financial support packages for you and your community Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

This is quite obvious really…avoid carbon miles, work (or sleep) as you commute, and meet people as you travel. It’s often a lot cheaper too: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

The only carbon dioxide you release as you walk is in your breath. Walking is social, healthy and personally sustainable in terms of your own – the typical advice is, for urban dwellers at least, enrich 30 minutes per day of your commute with travelling on foot: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

It rains much less in Ireland than we think – in Castlebar Mayo, it rains on 48% of days in the year, in Dublin it rains on 25% of days. But it doesn’t necessarily rain when you need to travel. Using THIS wonderful invention, will help you maximize your saddle-kms and minimise the ones behind the wheel: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

A great way of supporting farming practices that are grounded in sustainability: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

Community initiatives like the Dublin Food Co-operative or Edible Landscape Westport  are beacons of socially driven sustainability. Go out of your way to support them. And when you have, see of you can set up something similar in your local area: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

With co-workers, neighbours or family: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

While you’re waiting to make the switch (and indeed even once you do) to carbon free driving, there are things you can do to reduce the environmental impact of your car-kms. Most of these things are safer and more sensible as well: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

It’s hard to keep sustainability without seeing the benefits with your own eyes: join up and commit yourself, it’ll help you keep up the positive momentum: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)

Match your own and your communities actions with encouraging policy makers to help make things more sustainable on a national and international level. Policy makers need to be encouraged into initiating change, when they see it matters to you and your community, it will start to matter to them: Click Here 🖰 (links off-site)