Committee members from Blackrock Tidy Towns, Co Louth were presented a plaque by Dr Shane Colgan from the Environmental Protection Agency and Mary Murtagh from Louth Co Co for their participation and completion of the An Taisce Green Home programme at the An Taisce Green-Schools awards in the Helix, Dublin on the 22nd of May.

An Taisce would like to congratulate Blackrock Tidy Towns members for their commitment to the programme over a two period, for completing householder surveys and for actively engaging in the An Taisce Green Home challenges on the themes of waste, energy, water and transport. The Blackrock participants were invited to provide comments that facilitated feedback on their thoughts and views on the action based Green Home challenges.

For example our Christmas Food Waste Reduction challenge solicited this response from one participant, “Because we were more aware of the waste, even guilty we made a conscious effort to be more accurate in our Christmas shopping, after giving some thought to amount of overspending in food purchases last year (2012). We saved by taking more time to accurately prepare our shopping list. We still over purchased in some areas and have taken note of this in order to be even more accurate in our food shopping next year”.

The Green Home Water Wise challenge explored the concept of ‘Virtual Water’ being the amount of embedded water in all food stuffs, for example 1 kg of beef requires 15,400 litres of water in the entire production process. One participant stated "I was surprised by how much water it takes to produce beef in particular." The participants made great financial savings on their household bills and at the same time had the ‘Feel Good Factor’ of seeing how small behaviour changes can benefit us as individuals and our environment.

The An Taisce Green Home programme team were delighted to work with Blackrock Tidy Towns and believe the participants are wonderful ambassadors to spread the Green Home message into their wider community and beyond, leading by example in their proactive approach, finding ways to save money in the transition to more sustainable lifestyles.

The An Taisce Green Home programme also works with schools and extends the very successful Green-School message beyond the school gates into the wider community. If you as an individual, a local community group or business would like to join the An Taisce Green Home programme and follow in the steps of Blackrock Tidy Towns go to www.greenhome.ie or call our office at 01-4002218.