ON Friday last, the students of Gaelcholáiste Chiarraí joined in solidarity with their fellow students all over the world with a practical response to Greta Thunberg’s call for immediate and substantial action to deal with environmental degradation.
Teaming up with An Taisce on its greencoasts.org campaign, the Coiste Glas, a group of 21 environmentally conscious students, descended on Cockleshell beach in the Kerries, to tackle the regular build-up of beach litter there, collecting 13 large bags (160kg of rubbish) full in under an hour.
Interestingly, the most common items collected included plastic straws, cigarette butts and unsurprisingly, single-use plastic bottles.
Continued below…
In another initiative of the Coiste Glas, the students of Gaelcholáiste Chiarraí successfully took single-use plastic bottles out of circulation in the school replacing them with a biodegradable plastic bottle that lasts five years before itself being composted.
These re-useable and compostable plastic bottles are a sustainable solution to the conundrum of what to do with the re-useable plastic bottle itself once it reaches end-of-life.
Gaelcholáiste Chiarraí had to look to Dutch bicycle company Tacx to find such a product as no Irish company currently fills this gap in the market, budding eco-entrepreneurs take note!